Storage/Data

You can store your files on your home, work, and/or scratch directory. All directories are mounted on both submit nodes and all compute nodes. Each directory is assigned a variable when you log in that you can use for quicker access to that space and reference in your scripts.

NOT BACKED UP: No data, anywhere, is backed up. We recommend using the Research File Storage for those purposes.

⚠Tailing output - Slow down
Due to the nature of the parallel file system used for the cluster, tailing the output of a job could cause the job to perform slower.
This is due to the file system having to update your tail as well as accept the writes from the job.
If your job is mostly CPU intensive, you may not notice a different. But if I/O intensive, you may see a performance drop.

To see any of the information below, run the command crctool

Home Directory ($HOME): Your home directory is a place only you have access to. If you wish to share your data, see $WORK directory below. You have a 100 GB disk and 100,000 file limit quota.
The path to your home directory is (replace username with your KU Online ID):
```
/home/username
```
Work Directory ($WORK): Your work directory is a shared space for you to collaborate with your group. 1 TB is given for free to all owner groups. The quota is based off how much storage the owner of the group has purchased directory or indirectly from purchasing nodes. Additional $WORK can be purchased for $100 per TB per year.

To find your $WORK directory, run the command crctool. The path to your $WORK directory is:
```
/panfs/pfs.local/work/groupname/username
```
Scratch Directory ($SCRATCH): Your scratch directory is a place for you to use as a temporary space for your data processing. The quota for scratch is a finite amount, but is set for the whole volume, which CRC staff will maintain.

Files equal to or greater than 60 days old will be deleted

To find your $SCRATCH directory, run the command crctool. The path to your $SCRATCH directory is:
```
/panfs/pfs.local/scratch/groupname/username
```
30 Day Temp Directory ($TEMP): Your temp directory is a place for you to use as a temporary space for your data processing. The quota for temp is a finite amount, but is set for the whole volume, which CRC staff will maintain. The temp storage system is off warranty and if broken beyond repair will be recycled.

Files equal to or greater than 30 days old will be deleted daily

To find your $TEMP directory, run the command crctool. The path to your $TEMP directory is:
```
/temp/30day/groupname/username
```

You can use $HOME, $WORK, $SCRATCH, and $TEMP in you submit scripts and make it easier to get around the file systems.

Quota

Location	Hard Quota	Hard File Limit
`$HOME`	100 GB	100,000
`$WORK`	Varies	No Limit
`$SCRATCH`	70 TB	No Limit
`$TEMP`	164 TB	No Limit

Each of the above locations, $HOME, $WORK, $SCRATCH, and $TEMP each have an enforced quota. To determine how much of your quota you are using for each of these volumes, login to the cluster and run crctool

This will produce output similar to the following:

------------------------------- Storage Variables ------------------------------
| Variable     Path                                                            |
| $HOME        /home/username                                                  |
| $WORK        /panfs/pfs.local/work/groupname/username                        |
| $SCRATCH     /panfs/pfs.local/scratch/groupname/username                     |
| $TEMP        /temp/30day/groupname/username                        |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------- Disk Quotas ----------------------------------
| Disk         Usage (GB)     Limit    %Used   File Usage       Limit   %Used  |
| $HOME             33.51    100.00    33.51        99054      100000   99.05  |
| $WORK           6436.80  13969.84    46.08       296488           0       0  |
| $SCRATCH       39533.15  55879.35    70.75            1           0       0  |
| $TEMP              0.04 167605.89     0.00                        0       0  |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Violation

Users will receive an email from the Panasas File System when a quota for $HOME, $WORK, and $SCRATCH has been exceeded (Hard Quota) or is about to be exceeded (Soft Quota). They will all start with the information below:

PanActive Manager Warning: User Quota Violation Soft (bytes)

Date:        Wed Feb 07 00:00:16 CST 2018           
System Name: <name>                              
System IP:   <ip range>
Version      <version>                    
Customer ID: <custid>

Soft Quota: A warning email is sent to the user that the specified resource is about to exceed the size or file limit quota. The example below is for $HOME for the user and has crossed the 85 GB threshold.

User Quota Violation Soft (bytes):  Limit reached on volume /home for Unix User:   (Id:  uid:<uid>) Limit = 85.00 GB.

The above message applies to the following component:
    Volume: /home

This example is for a Soft Quota Violation of the file limit size in $HOME

User Quota Violation Soft (files):  Limit reached on volume /home for Unix User:   (Id:  uid:<uid>) Limit = 85.00 K.

The above message applies to the following component:
    Volume: /home

Hard Quota: The maximum allotted space has been reached for that volume. This could be for any of locations above, including the system-wide location of $SCRATCH. No further writes are allowed, and you must remove files before creating any new ones

User Quota Violation Hard (bytes):  Limit reached on volume /home for Unix User:   (Id:  uid:<uid>) Limit = 100.00 GB.  No further writes allowed for this Unix User in this volume unless it has at most 95.00 GB of data.

The above message applies to the following component:
    Volume: /home

When you have removed enough files to drop below the Hard or Soft Quota violation, an Event CLEARED email will be sent to you. At the top of the email, you will notice the below:

Event CLEARED: PanActive Manager Warning: User Quota Violation Hard (bytes)

Transferring Files

Using the Data Transfer Node (dtn.ku.edu), files on the Research File Storage (ResFS) and the KU Community Cluster may be accessed

Beginning path to access files:

ResFS: /resfs/GROUPS/
RAS: /resfs/ARCHIVE/
KU Community Cluster: /panfs/pfs.local/

Globus

⚠Non Cluster Users
You will receive a warning of Permission Denied if you do not have
an account on the KU Community Cluster after accessing the
KU Data Transfer Node. This is due to not having a home directory
set up. You may ignore this and input the path to your files on
/resfs/GROUPS or we can create a home directory for you by you 
emailing crchelp@ku.edu.

Globus is a mechanism to transfer files between managed endpoints and personal endpoints. It does not store any data. Globus works through your internet browser, so therefore works on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

To start using Globus, navigate to the Globus File Manager in your browser. From there, choose University of Kansas as your institution. You will be redirected to login with your KU Online ID.

Follow the Globus getting started documentation to access the KU Data Transfer Node. Instead of Globus Tutorial Endpoint search for KU and choose KU Data Transfer Node.

Transfer files to desktop or laptop

You need to create a personal endpoint on your desktop or laptop to transfer files from the KU Data Transfer Node to.

Full documentation for setting up a Globus Connect Personal endpoint.

On the File Manager page, you need to choose the two endpoints you'd like to copy between. The cluster endpoint is named KU Data Transfer Node. The other endpoint will be the name you gave in the previous step. You can now drag and drop the files you wish to transfer.

If you wish to share data from you personal endpoint or transfer data between two personal endpoints, you will need to request access to the CRC Globus group.

Transfer between ResFS, RAS, and KU Community Cluster

On each panel under the File Manager, choose the KU Data Transfer Node endpoint. You can then navigate to ResFS on one side and the KU Community Cluster storage on the other panel. Simply drag and drop the files or folder you wish to transfer

Sharing Data

If you are not on the KU Community Cluster and you wish to share data, please send an email to crchelp@ku.edu to get your account set up.

The recipient will need to set up Globus Connect Personal if their institution does not have an endpoint to transfer the data to

The Globus documentation on sharing has a great walk through on the steps taken to share data

SCP

You must be on KU's network or connected to KU Anywhere to access the Data Transfer Node (DTN).

The KU Community Cluster supports SCP, SFTP and Rsync for transferring files:

Windows

Macintosh

Filezilla
Cyberduck
Use command line SCP

Linux

Filezilla
Use command line SCP

Host:dtn.ku.edu
Port: 22

scp username@host1:~/file1 username@host2:~/file1_copy

For example, to copy a file from your home directory on your local computer (e.g., ~/foo.txt) to your home directory on the HPC, on the command line, enter (replace username with your KU Online ID username):

scp ~/foo.txt username@dtn.ku.edu:~/foo.txt

Rsync

Rsync is a command for Linux and Mac only. It is used to transfer files back and forth using the Terminal and comes with no GUI.

You must be on KU's network or connected to KU Anywhere to access the Data Transfer Node (DTN).

The KU Community Cluster supports SCP, SFTP and Rsync for transferring files:

Host: dtn.ku.edu
Port: 22

rsync -avP username@host1:~/file1 username@host2:~/file1_copy

rsync -avP ~/foo.txt username@dtn.ku.edu:~/foo.txt

Recovering your files

One of the features of our cluster filesystem is the concept of snapshots. Snapshots are a daily capture of files in a given directory. All snapshots are user accessible, but only for volumes that are owned by a group the user is part of. Snapshots are read-only, but can be used for when you accidentally delete a file, you can retrieve that file up to seven days later.

Snapshots are stored in the .snapshot directory in the root of the your work or home directory, but this directory is hidden, and won't be displayed in listings (ls) of that directory. Snapshots are captured for $HOME and $WORK directories but not $SCRATCH

For example, say you're working in your work directory, (i.e. /panfs/pfs.local/work/groupname/username) and you accidentally delete a file named oops.txt. To restore that file from a previous snapshot, you can navigate to the .snapshot directory for your group's work and there you will find directories containing snapshots from the past seven days. Each of these directories contain a file structure similar to that of /panfs/pfs.local/groupname and has a snapshot of what was in those files when that snapshot was taken. You can navigate into those directories and copy the file(s) you accidentally deleted back to your work directory.

cd /panfs/pfs.local/work/groupname/.snapshot
ls
cd date-of-snapshot.automatic 
cd username
cp oops.txt /panfs/pfs.local/work/groupname/username

If one particular file was heavily modified, the snapshot may not recover the most recent change, but it will have the files that were in those directories when the snapshot was taken for that day.

Snapshots of home directories can also be found in

/home/.snapshot/date-of-snapshot.automatic/username

Due to the way that directory is set up you cannot ls inside the date-of-snapshot.automatic directory, instead you must go directly to your own home directory as shown above.

Snapshots are on a rolling seven day purge, so if you accidentally delete a file you will need to restore it within seven days or it will be gone forever.

Research File Storage

Research File Storage (ResFS) provides easily accessible file sharing services to KU research projects, research groups and service labs. Any tenure track faculty member, designated research center, department or principal investigator on a research grant can purchase ResFS storage.

Stored data is accessible within the KU network or remotely via the KU Anywhere virtual private network (VPN). ResFS is protected by a RAID system. Data that is inadvertently deleted or otherwise lost can be recovered through self-service snapshots. A Snapshot is a 'frozen,' read-only view of a volume that provides easy access to previous versions of files and directories for up to 30 days. To recover data, follow our Knowledge Base articles for PC or Mac. ResFS data is also mirrored in the KUMC datacenter for major disaster recovery purposes only.

Research File Storage cost:

The Office of Research subsidizes ResFS, lowering the cost for researchers, faculty, departments, research projects and principal investigators.

250 gigabytes (GB):

No cost for the first 250GB.

More than 250GB:

Additional storage can be purchased in 1TB increments at a cost of $75 per terabyte, per year. Minimum purchase is 1TB.

Request New Research File Storage or Increase to Existing Storage

For a new storage allotment or for an increase in your current storage allotment, please complete the Research File Storage Request Form in ServiceNow.

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