Project Filesystem

Overview

The Project Filesystem is a global file system available to all NERSC computational systems. It allows groups  of NERSC users to store and share data. A directory in the Project Filesystem is available by request.

Requesting a Project Directory

NERSC allocates project directories to groups of users who need to share files among themselves and/or between machines. These users can all be members of a single repository, or collaborating members of different repositories. To request a project directory, please use the Project Directory Request Form. NOTE: AS OF August 1, 2012, you need to log in with your NIM password to access this form.

Purging

No, files in Project are not subject to purging. 

Backup

No, files in Project are not backed up. It is the responsibility of the users to back up their files to HPSS or some other archival resource.

Access Control

There must be a project directory administrator associated with each project directory. This user must have a NIM role of PI, PI Proxy, or Project Manager.

Access control for project directories is based on Unix file groups. In most situations, the name of the project directory is the same as the associated file group.

Quotas

Default project directory quotas are 4 TB and 4,000,000 inodes. If your directory needs more than that, fill out the Disk Quota Change Request Form.

To check your current usage and quota in a project directory, use the prjquota command, specifying the name of the project directory. For example, if you have access to a project directory named "bigsci":

% prjquota bigsci
           ------ Space (GB) -------     ----------- Inode -----------
 Project    Usage    Quota   InDoubt      Usage      Quota     InDoubt  
--------   -------  -------  -------     -------    -------    -------  
  bigsci      1455     3072        0      307423     500000         20

In the above example, the project directory "bigsci" has used about 1.5 TB of its 3 TB block quota, and about 307000 inodes out of its 500000 inode quota.

The system has a sustainable bandwidth of 1 GB/sec bandwidth for streaming I/O, although actual performance for user applications will depend on a variety of factors. Because NGF is a distributed network filesystem, performance will be slightly less than that of filesystems that are local to NERSC compute platforms. This should only be an issue for applications whose performance is I/O bound.

Usage

Project directories are created in /project/projectdirs. The name of the project directory is usually the same the associated Unix file group. This name will sometimes be the same as a NERSC repository, and all active users of that repository (which is already a Unix file group) will thereby have access to the project directory.

However, there are cases where a repository name is not suitable for a project directory. For example, some large projects might want a project directory to be accessible by members of multiple repositories. Also, some long-term projects outlive the specific repositories that constitute them. In these cases, a project directory administrator may request the creation of a new project name. This will result in the creation of a new Unix file group consisting soley of the project directory administrator, followed by the creation of the project directory itself. The project directory administrator must then use NIM to add users to the newly-created file group (this is a very simple operation). Only these users will be able to access the project directory.