Overview
All NICS resources have access to three file systems:
- Network File System (NFS)
- Lustre File System (Lustre)
- High Performance Storage System (HPSS)
For more information about working directories on these systems, please use the following links:
Scroll down for information on each file system type.
Network File System (NFS)
The Network File Service (NFS) server contains user's home directories, project directories, and software directories. Home and project directories can be used to store frequently used items such as source code, binaries, and scripts, and both are accessible from all interactive NICS resources.
Lustre File System (Lustre)
The massively parallel distributed file system Lustre is used for scratch space on NICS resources. This space is intended for production work and not long term storage. The current configuration of Lustre is shown in the following table:
| NICS Resource | Lustre scratch | size |
|---|---|---|
| Kraken | /lustre/scratch/$USER | 2.4 PB |
| Nautilus, Keeneland | /lustre/medusa/$USER | 427 TB |
On Kraken and Nautilus, the environment variable $SCRATCHDIR points to the Lustre scratch area. Also, XSEDE (formerly TeraGrid) provides the environment variables $TG_CLUSTER_HOME and $TG_CLUSTER_SCRATCH to point to home directories and Lustre scratch space respectively.
Special notice for Kraken users: On Kraken, it is important to remember that compute nodes do not have access to home and project directories on NFS---they can only see Lustre.
Lustre is a shared resource by all users on the system. Optimizing your IO performance will not only lessen the load on Lustre, it will save you compute time as well. Please consider reading the I/O and Lustre Usage page which we believe will help you make the best use of the parallel Lustre filesystem and improve your application's I/O performance.
High Performance Storage System (HPSS)
The High Performance Storage System (HPSS) is an archival storage system jointly operated by NICS and NCCS. Data transfer between this system and the rest of NICS is provided by HSI utility. Please see HPSS section for more details.