NICS Secure access requires RSA one-time passwords (OTPs), and is required to access HPSS storage.
The mass storage facility at NICS currently consists of tape and disk storage components, IBM servers, Linux servers, and High Performance Storage System (HPSS) software.Tape storage is provided by robotic tape libraries.
Data written to HPSS is automatically stored using a method appropriate to the file size, however, HPSS is not intended for storing many small files. If you wish to archive small files, please collect them into a single file before transferring using tar, or during the transfer using htar. In general, htar should take about as long as hsi to transfer a given set of files.
The StorageTek libraries can each hold up to 5,000 cartridges. The libraries house a total of eighteen 9840 drives (20 GB cartridges, uncompressed), two 9940A drives (60 GB cartridges, uncompressed) and sixteen 9940B drives (200 GB cartridges, uncompressed). The 9840 and 9940A drives read and write uncompressed data at 10 MB per second; the 9940B reads and writes at 30 MB per second. The beneficial feature of the 9840 tape technology is its fast seek time for small file access; these are the performance drives. The 9940 tape technology provides the ability to store a larger amount of data on each tape cartridge for more voluminous data sets; these are the capacity drives.
Four types of RAID (redundant arrays of independent disks) are used in the mass storage facility.
