Storage
The Central Research Computing Cluster (Central Cluster) provides several different kinds of storage, each with its own characteristics. Most researchers will, at some point, use all of the different forms. By default, each new account is set up with a home directory and individual PI are set up with a nominal amount of Project Disk, available on all the nodes, also a scratch space is provided as temporary space for running jobs and often provides the highest performance for this purpose. Lastly, Archive space is provided as cost effective & less time-sensitive needs service for long term storage of data.
- Individual home directories (long-term, small size)
- Non-backed-up project space (moderate-term, any size, shared, high performance)
- Scratch (short-term, large size, highest performance)
- Archive (long term, any size, infrequent access)
Summary
| System | Backups | Default Space | availability | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /home | NFS | Yes | 20GB | Compute Nodes |
| /project | Lustre | No | 5TB (shared within research group) | Compute Nodes |
| /scratch/s1 | Lustre | No | 100TB (shared) | Compute Nodes |
| /archive | NFS | Yes | 0 | Sandbox |
/home
On the Central Cluster, each user has home directory /users/username with a quota of 20GB which is backed up nightly. The directory is by default accessible to individual user only.
/project
Research group can use Project storage space to collaborate and sharing in their work.
Every project member can write and access files in their project directories.
Each participating Research group will have a 5TB of free Project storage, additional storage can be purchase from Central Cluster.
The project Disk Space is provided by high-performance parallel file system over the HPC Infiniband network for high speed disk access.
Please note that has no backup by default, please back it up somewhere else other than on cluster or purchase backup service for protection against disaster event.
/scratch/s1
If one need very fast temporary disk I/O access, you will want to use the HPC scratch area in /scratch/s1 file system.
All users can access the scratch file-system from any node on the cluster at /scratch/s1.
Please note that the file system has no backup and is meant for providing really fast disk I/O access and for a temporary time only (the length of your job).
It is NOT to be used for extended storage. Any file older than 2-weeks will be automatically removed.
/archive
The archive storage space is a solution for those who need to maintain a second copy of their data and are require users to take responsibility for maintaining
that copy. Archive storage is offered at lower cost than the high-speed not-backed-up storage.
Archive storage is not intended to be used as a replacement for active/working primary storage.
The archive storage is mounted at /archive on sandbox node only and is not accessible by other compute nodes.
You can request pricing and other information of archive storage via mail to centralcluster@cuhk.edu.hk.