UAntwerp storage#

The storage is organised according to the VSC storage guidelines.

File systems#

Environment variable

Type

Access

Backup

Default quota

Total capacity

$VSC_HOME

NFS/XFS

VSC

YES

3 GB, 20k files

3.5 TB

$VSC_DATA

NFS/XFS

VSC

YES

25 GB, 100k files

60 TB
$VSC_SCRATCH
$VSC_SCRATCH_SITE

BeeGFS

Site

NO

50 GB, 100k files

0.6 PB

$VSC_SCRATCH_NODE

ext4

Node

NO

node-specific

For node-specific details, see the hardware information for Vaughan, Leibniz and Breniac.

UAntwerp storage guidelines#

  • $VSC_HOME should only be used for all configuration files that Linux programs use.

    • It should not be used to install software or to run jobs from.

    • It is also not meant to be heavily written to, but offers excellent read performance.

    • Backups are made on a daily basis.

  • $VSC_DATA should be used for data that should be stored for a longer time, because it will be reused on the cluster.

    • It is the best place to install software you prefer to install yourself. For performance reasons we do advice users though to build on existing centrally installed software, and not do a complete install of (e.g.) Python or R if it can be build upon the central installation.

    • It should not be used to store temporary data or run jobs on. We may however ask users who tend to generate many small files to use this file system instead of the scratch file system.

    • Backups are made on a daily basis, but directories with large installations or many small files may be excluded.

  • $VSC_SCRATCH is stored on a parallel file system, which is optimized for large I/O transfers to large files.

    • It should be used to temporary or transient data (unless told otherwise).

    • There is no backup.

Warning

The VSC storage is not meant for backup purposes. You should not rely on it to store all data of your PhD or postdoc. It is the individual user’s responsibility to store that data on reliable storage managed by your research group or the ICT service of the university.

Environment variables#

The environment variables point to your directories on the different storage locations.

Environment variable

Path

$VSC_HOME

/user/antwerpen/2../vsc2….

$VSC_DATA

/data/antwerpen/2../vsc2….
$VSC_SCRATCH
$VSC_SCRATCH_SITE

/scratch/antwerpen/2../vsc2….

$VSC_SCRATCH_NODE

/tmp

The dots are wildcards that match single digits.

For users with a different home institution, the path names will be similar to those above with trivial modifications based on your home institution and VSC account number.

About quota#

Additional quota can be requested via the UAntwerp support team at hpc@uantwerpen.be.

When requesting additional quota, please state clearly what you would like the new quota to be and provide a motivation on why you would need that increase.

For users with a different home institution, the quota on $VSC_HOME and $VSC_DATA directories are determined by the local policy of your home institution, as these file systems are mounted from there. This implies that you have to ask for additional quota at your home institution.