Introduction

In our Faculty, different types of data storage are offered:

Home directories

Your Science login comes with a home directory of 5GB at no costs. This is a safe place to store you work related documents. Home directories are stored on reliable hardware and backupped automatically. If you need more than 5GB of storage, and you can’t clean up some data, it can be enlarged on request.

Home directory paths

On C&CZ managed systems, this is where you can find your home directory:

On some linux systems we have noticed problems when working with nfs based homedirectories, for this situation (linux(alt))we have changed the location of the nfs shared homedirectory to be under /nfshome/ and your $HOME homedirectory in the normal place under /home/, but This is not stored in a backup!

From other systems like your home PC, you can reach your home directory through the paths below:

In case your account has been created recently (see DIY):

Access rights

By default, home directories are only accessible to the owners themselves. However, it is possible to change the access rights (ie. chmod o+rx ~).

Network shares

For larger storage needs and the ability to share files in your group, there are network shares. Network shares are available as both Samba¹ and NFS² share. As mentioned in the storage overview, network shares are backed up and hosted on reliable servers. The costs involved with network shares depend on the share size and the backup options.

Network share costs and backups

One TB³ (1000 GB) costs € 36 per year. This includes a mandatory backup. (Roughly a backup doubles the amount of data). A share without a backup is possible, but this does not reduce the cost. Only when the storage costs exceed € 1000 per year will your institute be charged.

Currently (2024+) the largest volume size is limited to the amount of disks that fit in a server, which is roughly 200 TB.

All new shares are using ZFS and have local snapshots. Departments should not buy their own storage servers, when you need storage request it from us and we will arrange it for you on our servers.

Backups

Our new storage has backups of up to 2 years with an increasing interval. After 2 years the backups are expired.

Tape backups are still used for monthly backups on older servers and yearly backups on those shares that are configured for that (not larger than a tape⁴. If you need longer backup retention than 2 years, please mention this when requesting storage. Tape backups are more expensive than disk backup and will be billed separately.

Network share paths

On C&CZ managed systems, this is where you can find a network share. Using sharename as an example:

For self managed systems, you can access the following network paths:

Access rights

The ability to access files on these folders can be limited to a group of logins. Groups can be managed by the group owners on DIY.

Special shares

Some services are built on these specific shares:

DFS

For groups with many network drives, a DFS drive is available. If your group uses this, you can access all your group’s network drives by connecting just one drive. Whether you can view the underlying drives depends on the permissions you have. The path to connect to the DFS share is:

\\dfs.science.ru.nl\dfs

Or, one level deeper to directly see the tree of your group:

\\dfs.science.ru.nl\dfs\{group directory}

Ordering

When ordering a network share, please send us the following details:

Local storage

Local storage refers to disk space in or attached to systems like desktop pc’s and cluster nodes. Usually, local storage consists of single disks. In case of a disk failure, your data is likely te be lost. Local disks are usually called /scratch to remind you of the temporary nature of the storage. Local storage is not backed up. Advantages of local storage are low costs and fast disk access.