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This page documents the various questions related to lilac storage. Lilac storage is primarily divided into 4 categories.

Lilac home storage :

- Description : GPFS shared parallel filesystem, replicated, and not backed up.
- Purpose: To store software related code and scripts, default quota size is small and fixed.
- Mount: /home/<user>
- Access: All Lilac nodes, including compute storage and login nodes.
- Default quota: 100GB
- Snapshots: 7 days of snapshots. ( not backed up ). Can be accessed in /home/.snapshots/<user>
- Replicated: yes

Lilac compute storage :

- Description : GPFS shared parallel filesystem, replicated, and not backed up.
- Purpose: For jobs to read and write compute data from login and compute nodes, default quota size is larger with flexibility to request larger quota.
- Mount: /data/<lab group>
- Access: All Lilac nodes, including compute storage and login nodes.
- Default quota: 5TB ( Increased/Decreased on request )
- Snapshots: 7 days of snapshots. ( not backed up ). Can be accessed in /data/.snapshots/<date>/<lab group>
- Replicated: yes

Lilac warm storage :

- Description : GPFS shared parallel filesystem, not replicated, and not backed up. Comparatively slower than lilac compute storage.
- Purpose: To store long term data. Only accessible from login nodes and cannot be accessed from compute nodes.
- Mount: /warm/<lab group>
- Access: Only lilac and luna login nodes.
- Default quota: 5TB ( Increased/Decreased on request )
- Snapshots: 7 days of snapshots. ( not backed up ). Can be accessed in /warm/.snapshots/<date>/<lab group>
- Replicated: no

Lilac local scratch storage :

- Description : XFS filesystem, not replicated, and not backed up. Local and not a shared filesystem, slower than GPFS.
- Purpose: To store local temporary data related to compute jobs. Since this is not a shared filesystem, the temporary data needs to be cleaned up and copied back to shared filesystem after job completion.
- Mount: /scratch/
- Access: Only lilac compute nodes.
- Default quota: No quota and limited to free disk space in /scratch.
- Snapshots: No snapshots.
- Replicated: no

How to :

Check Quota for GPFS filesystem:

Since blocks on Lilac GPFS home/compute storage are replicated, quota is double the apparent size of data.

Lilac home storage :
mmlsquota lila:home --block-size auto

Lilac compute storage :

mmlsquota -j data_<lab group name> lila --block-size auto

df -h /data/<lab group name>
df -ih /data/<lab group name>

Lilac warm storage (oscar) :

mmlsquota -j warm_<lab group name> oscar --block-size auto

df -h /warm/<lab group name>
df -ih /warm/<lab group name>

mmlsquota gives information about quota on number of files too, along with information about block quota.

Filesystem

Fileset

type

blocks

quota

limit

in_doubt

grace

|

files

quota

limit

in_doubt

grace

Remarks

Filesystem name

Fileset name

fileset/usr/grp

Blocks currently occupied

Your block quota

Your limit for "7 days" beyond quota.

Blocks in doubt that will be counted towards your quota.

Happens when many files are added/deleted recently.

Countdown of 7 days is set once you occupy more blocks than mentioned in quota.

Number of files currently present

Your quota on number of files

Your limit on number of files for "7 days" beyond quota.

Number of files in doubt that will be counted towards your quota.

Countdown of 7 days is set once you occupy more files than mentioned in quota.

Once the number of blocks or number of files reach the value mentioned in "quota" - Storage system will give 7 days as a grace period, to fill up until the max value mentioned in "limit" is reached. Storage system will not allow any more data to be written when:

The block limit/file limit is reached.
7 days have passed since the blocks/files have occupied more than "quota". The grace field will show you the number of days left, before which the number of blocks/files need to go less than the value mentioned in "quota".

2. Copy files from other clusters:

HAL cluster is outside the firewall, so lilac cannot be accessed directly from HAL cluster

SABA/LUNA/LUX:
To copy files from other clusters, first ssh -A into the other cluster to forward your keys.
ssh -A $USERNAME@$CLUSTER
We recommend rsync -va to copy files and directories.
Make note of the source directory/source files and destination directory/files on Lilac and copy them as below:
rsync -av --progress $SOURCEPATH lilac:$DESTPATH

HAL:
Remember that the hal cluster is outside the MSKCC network, and does not have access to lilac.

First - Make note of the source directory/source files on HAL and destination directory/files on Lilac:

To transfer data, ssh into lilac as below :

ssh -A $USERNAME@lilac.mskcc.org

Then pull files from HAL:

rsync -av --progress hal:$SOURCEPATH $DESTPATH

Make sure you calculate the size of data you will copy to lilac, and that you have enough space on lilac to avoid hitting your hard quota. lilac uses data replication to for safety, so a file containing 1G of data consumes 2G of quota on lilac.
You can see the size of files and directories with du, which will show 2G for 1G of file data due to replication. To see file size without replication overhead use du --apparent-size instead:
Depending on the size and number of files to copy, you may run multiple rsync commands simultaneously to copy different directories.
The HPC private network is faster than the MSKCC campus network, so using short names (lilac, saba, luna, selene, etc.) will often make transfers faster than using fully qualified domain names such as luna.mskcc.org. This does not apply to hal, though