Skip to content

Storage Space on the Cluster

Storage on the Cluster

Once you have your account set up on the ORC clusters, you will have access to the following storage options.

Home

/home/UserID
The /home directory is where you land when you first start a shell session on the cluster. From /home, you can navigate to the other spaces, including /scratch and /projects.

Properties of /home:

  • Read/write on the login nodes
  • On ARGO, /home is mounted read-only on the compute nodes - jobs cannot write to your home directory.
  • On HOPPER, /home is mounted read-write on all nodes - jobs can write to your home directory.
  • Limited to 50 GB per user. You will get an email warning to clear space once you approach this limit.
  • Backed up.

SCRATCH

/scratch/UserID

Properties of /scratch:

  • Read/write on every node - jobs can write output here
  • Scratch directories have no space limit
  • Temporary: Data in /scratch gets purged 90 days from the date of creation, so make sure to move your files to a safe place before the cycle ends.
  • /scratch is not backed up.

PROJECTS

/projects/project-owner
This is additional persistent free storage for projects whose storage requirements exceed the 50 GB that is available in the /home directory. Faculty can request up to 1 TB of disk space if needed. Students, Postdocs and collaborators should request access to available projects spaces via their PI/advisor/supervisor. To request a projects directory, the faculty (PI) should send an email to orchelp@gmu.edu asking for the projects directory to be created. They should also provide a (user ID) list of those that should be granted access to the /rpojects directory. If students/other group members need to be added to an existing /projects space, the PI should send an email to orchelp@gmu.edu asking that hte new members be added to the direvtory.

The /projects space is

  • On ARGO, read-only on the compute nodes.
  • On HOPPER, read-write on all the nodes.
  • Not backed up.

All these are free storage resources on the ORC clusters. If you need more storage space on the cluster, please send an email to orchelp@gmu.edu to discuss available paid storage options.