NCSA Mass Storage System Quota Policy

Overview
Managing Home and Project Space
Requesting additional space

1. Overview

Due to media costs and increase in usage, NCSA will be implementing user quotas on data in its mass storage system (MSS) starting Jan 1 2010.

All users will have a home directory quota of 1 TB.
All TeraGrid projects allocated via TRAC will have a default of 5 TB per project in a separate projects area.
All TeraGrid Startup and NCSA locally allocated projects will have a default of 1 TB per project in a separate projects area.

Home directory quotas are fixed at 1 TB and cannot be increased; PIs can request additional project space if needed.

Users over the quota limits in the home directory and/or the project directory will receive emails with usage information.

Users in NCSA and TeraGrid staff projects will have a home directory quota of 1 TB, and no default project space.

We strongly encourage everyone to delete any unneeded data to conserve space.

2. Managing Home and Project space

The project directory name will be the three letter NCSA PSN of the allocation, under the directory /UROOT/projects. For users in multiple projects, a directory will be created for each project. The Principal Investigator (PI) of the project will be the owner of the directory. User subdirectories will be created under each project space, with a soft link named the three letter NCSA PSN in the user's home directory to their subdirectory in the projects area.

For example, users in project xyz will have user subdirectories under /UROOT/projects/xyz, with a soft link named xyz in each user's home directory to their project subdirectory.

Users in a project can also make other subdirectories under the PSN directory.

The SSH interface to NCSA MSS provides a couple of commands for checking usage and quota information:

mssquota

provides information on home and project(s) directory usage and quotas, updated nightly. Project directory usage will be available after it has been populated.

mss ac/jdoe> mssquota

		Quota Information: jdoe  

Home Directory                Usage        Quota     % Used     Date Updated    
-------------------------  -----------  -----------  ------  -------------------
/UROOT/u/ac/jdoe               7.15 GB      1.00 TB    1.00  2009-10-30 03:20:24

UNIX du utility

provides an estimate of file space usage. The command du --help provides the options and usage syntax.
For example, the following command will give your total home directory usage:

du -sh $HOME

For managing your space:

If your home directory usage is under 1 TB and will remain that way, you do not need to do anything.
If your home directory usage is over 1 TB, you will need to move data over to your project area to get your usage to under 1 TB.
For space over the default provided in the projects area, see Requesting Additional Space below.

3. Requesting additional space

Additional storage space in NCSA MSS can be requested by the Principal Investigator of a project which will be granted in the projects area. The process for requesting space for TeraGrid projects is via the POPS System for TeraGrid Allocation Requests with justification for additional space needed. For the first round of requests:

All TeraGrid projects on NCSA HPC systems can make a request via a Supplemental request for NCSA Tape Storage.
Projects that have HPC system allocations at other TeraGrid sites can include a request for NCSA Tape Storage in a renewal or supplemental request.
NCSA local projects such as IACAT, I-CHASS, and Private Sector Program (PSP) should contact allocations@ncsa.illinois.edu.
NCSA and TeraGrid staff projects can make a request for project space by contacting allocations@ncsa.illinois.edu
Projects that have already requested space for NCSA Tape Storage and have allocation awards made will have the project quota set up automatically.

After this request, future requests can be made as usual as part of the annual allocation submission.

As with NCSA HPC system allocations, allocations for NCSA Tape Storage are made for a period of one year and will need to be renewed on an annual basis.