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Departmental Filesystems

GPFS File Server

The department filesystem offering is based around IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) running on IBM hardware. GPFS is a cluster based file system and will, hopefully, be able to provide much better scalability as the department continues to grow. The GPFS software natively allows us to re-export file systems via NFS and we use clustered CIFS to provide file access for Windows.

Linux filesystem

The GPFS filesystem is accessible on linux systems managed by tstaff through automounter using the nfs.cs.brown.edu alias at the moment. This will change in the future. The automounter takes care of mounting the GPFS file using the nfs protocol.

Windows filesystem

The GPFS file system is accessible from Windows using the cifs protocol. The GPFS filesystem shares are accessible through the cifs.cs.brown.edu alias using the Universal Naming Convention (i. e. \\cifs.cs.brown.edu\dfs\home for the home share access). In order to access these shares, you must use your Windows domain account credential (i.e. cs.brown.edu\username) when connecting from a remote machine (i.e. home machine, laptop).

All Windows machines managed by tstaff in the CS department are members of the CS.BROWN.EDU windows domain. You don't need to provided your credential when accessing the \\cifs.cs.brown.edu\dfs shares when logged on to a domain member systems. Your login credential is already valid for access.

Tstaff has implemented login scripts to automap the Y: and Z: drives when logging on to a CS.BROWN.EDU Windows domain system. The Z: drive maps the current logged on user home directory (i.e. \\cifs.cs.brown.edu\dfs\home\username). The Y: drive maps to the dfs root (i.e. \\cifs.cs.brown.edu\dfs). Other network map drives can be added per user but Y: and Z: are reserved by tstaff.

Quotas

Directories in home, research, data, and course have quotas attached to them. Ugrads have a default quota of 500M. The rest have quotas representing their data usage at the time of the move to GPFS. If you find you need more space please email problem.

The /local/bin/gpfs-usage command will let you know what percentage of your quota you are using and how much space you have left before hitting your soft quota.

Network Shares

cfarm - source for all unix applications provided by CIS (not useful in windows because these are linux libraries/binaries)

com - tstaff managed commercial unix applications that are backed up daily and have .snapshots

contrib - user managed software packages available on tstaff managed systems that are backed up daily and have .snapshots

course - active and inactive course directories which are backed up daily and have .snapshots

data - research data that is backed up daily with no .snapshots

home - user's home directories that are backed up daily and have .snapshots. User disk quota enforced.

local - tstaff managed linux software requested by faculty for support which is backed up daily and has .snapshots

map - miscellaneous map for other shared resources. May have .snapshots or not depending on the resource mapped.

nbu - storage space for large data sets that do not change. This area is not backed up and does not have .snapshots

pro - production software and data for various research groups that is backed up daily with .snapshots

research - research data that is backed up daily and has .snapshots

web - departmental internal/external web site that is backed up daily and has .snapshots

These network shares are accessibile from Windows through \\cifs.cs.brown.edu\dfs\.

** Faculty and grad students can request space in research, data, or nbu. To do this please email problem including the directory name you would like to use and the amount of space you'll be needing.

Please email problem if you have questions.