High Performance (Tier 1) Storage

All MSI researchers have access to a high-performance, high capacity primary storage platform. Any time you are connected to MSI systems you are accessing high performance storage, and it is the basis of our group and project storage as well as user home directories.

This system currently provides 10 PB (petabytes) of capacity. The integrity of the data is protected by daily snapshots and some targeted tape backups. It has sustained read bandwidth of over 200 GB/sec and 1.5 million random read iops.

There is default access to this storage by any MSI group with an active account. Very large needs can be also met, but need to be approved by the MSI HPC Allocation Committee. More details are available on the Storage Allocations page.

MSI provides each group a shared project space on the high performance primary storage that is accessible from all MSI systems. Your use of this space is limited by a storage quota that applies to your group's usage as a whole. See also: How can I check my disk quota? Your quota is allocated by MSI according to our storage allocation guidelines.

Users needing to store and manipulate extremely large files have the option of a contract based, dedicated storage. PIs should email [email protected] to explicitly request group storage quota increases or to contract for dedicated storage.

Scratch Storage

MSI provides additional temporary high performance storage in addition to the allocated project space, to be used while applications are running on the supercomputer. The "scratch" name is by analogy to "scratch paper" for temportary notes or work. Both "global" scratch space, which is a set-aside area of primary storage, and local scratch storage on individual compute systems, are available. See the individual system documentation for details. 

• Access to scratch storage does not need to be specially requested.
• The default quota for each group on Global Scratch is 40 TB and 10,000,000 files. MSI will review requests for temporary increases of this quota for individual projects on an ongoing basis.
• Scratch storage should not be used for any data of long-term value, mainly because...
• Data is automatically deleted after 30 days.