File Systems and Data Storage #

There are several locations on Orca where you can store your files and data. The different file systems have different limits (quotas) and performance characteristics, summarized in the following table.

Home Directory #

Your home directory (/home/<username>, where <username> is your Orca username) is on a shared filesystem that is mounted on all cluster nodes. This should be used to store your batch scripts, configuration files, local compiled software, etc. Home directories are backed up to tape on a nightly basis.

Parallel Scratch Storage #

Parallel scratch storage is allocated using HPC Workspaces.

In order to use parallel scratch storage, you must first create a workspace. A workspace is scratch space that expires after a set time (this is because scratch storage is for temporary rather than long-term storage).

Creating (allocating) a workspace #

To create a workspace, run the command ws_allocate <ws-name> <days>, where <ws-name> is the workspace name, and <days> is the number of days before the workspace will expire. You can give the workspace any name you like (workspace directories are automatically prefixed with your username, so the workspace name does not have to be globally unique). Running ws_allocate --help will show available options for workspace creation. The maximum number of days before a workspace expires is 30.

Once the workspace is created, it can be accessed at /scratch/<username>-<workspace-name>.

Listing workspaces #

You can list all your active workspaces by running ws_list.

Extending a workspace #

If your workspace is about to expire, and you want to keep it around for longer, you can extend the workspace, by running ws_extend <ws-name> <days>. A workspace may be extended a maximum of five times.

Sharing a workspace #

Currently, due to limitations of the underlying scratch filesystem, workspaces cannot be shared (the ws_share command will return an error). We hope to address this limitation in the future. For now, to request a shared workspace, please email orca@pdx.edu with the list of users, project description, and expiration date.

Local Scratch #

Each compute node comes equipped with a 480 GB SSD. This is high-performance storage that can be used as a local scratch space to store or access temporary files needed while a job is running. It is only accessible from within a Slurm job, where it is mounted at /tmp. Each node can only access data on its own SSD; there is no networked access.

If you need to repeatedly access files in one job, you may want to copy them to local scratch at the beginning of a job, from which subsequent access will be fast. If you need to keep any files from local scratch, they must be copied to another location (your home directory or parallel scratch storage) before the job finishes.