Storage overview

Aim: Provide a quick overview of the storage directories/shares available at Nikhef.

Target audience: Users who want to store (large amounts of) data at Nikhef.

Introduction

Five kinds of storage are available on the Stoomboot cluster.

/project, /data, and /dcache are all available via a network filesystem (NFS). Note these directories are automounted which means you will need to do something like ls /data/[group_name] and either create a directory with your name or navigate to an existing directory. Each type of storage has its own purpose as explained on their respective pages.

TL;DR

$HOME is for small private files, and configuration settings, and is backedup up.
/project is also backed up, and is for anything that you would need to rerun or recompile your code.
/data is for your software enviroments, input/output files that are <1GB and other "bulk" files, not backed up.
/dcache is for your root files / other data analsysis files, anthing that is >1GB.

There is another dCache storage resource available that can be accessed for distributed computing jobs (a.k.a., grid jobs). This storage service can be used for sharing results with your collaboration or experiement—so sharing data results outside of Nikhef. If you would like to use the Grid dCache storage, please email grid.sysadmin@nikhef.nl.