Storage - nthu-ioa/cluster GitHub Wiki
Users have access storage space under the following paths:
/cluster/home
(for code and other important small files with light, infrequent I/O);/data
(for large files and heavy I/O, like job output and log files).
These directories are hosted on separate volumes:
/cluster/home
is directly attached to our login node;/data
is provided by a separate storage server.
/cluster/home
:warning: Never write job output to Please avoid long-running/frequent writes and reads from the compute nodes to /cluster/home/
!
Heavy IO traffic to home
slows down the network and disk access for everyone because it is directly connected to our login node, fomalhaut
. The /data
disks have a dedicated server that can handle heavier IO loads without disrupting the rest of the network. Please send the output of your compute jobs, including logs and other temporary files, to /data
.
:warning: THERE IS NO BACKUP!
Make your own backups (i.e. not on the cluster) of any data you cannot afford to lose.
Although our storage is somewhat robust to the random failure of a few individual drives, it will not survive a catastrophe (e.g. a meltdown of one of our drive arrays or fire in the machine room).
Scratch space
Some of the compute nodes have fast local scratch drives for temporary storage that could help to speed up IO-intensive jobs. These are not visible on the network, only on the nodes.
See also:
- Storage tips and best practice.
- Large (>100GB) data transfers between
/home
and/data
and to/from the cluster.