Cheaha Storage (GPFS)

The Cheaha storage, also known as GPFS (General Parallel File System), is a distributed file system designed for managing dynamic data and serves as a storage solution on Cheaha. We provide the following Cheaha storage solutions.

• User Data and Home Directories:These directories are automatically created for every Cheaha user upon account setup. They are intended for storing essential program files, scripts, small input datasets, critical results, and frequently used files.
• Project Directories: A shared storage space for files related to a research team. Accessible from any login or compute node by group members. Use it to store scripts, datasets, results, and other files that need to be shared among collaborators.
• Network Scratch: Also known as "Global Scratch" or "User Scratch". The network scratch space is available on all nodes at /scratch/. Every researcher has a separate directory /scratch/$USER. The Linux environment variable $USER_SCRATCH points to this path. Please clean up unneeded data as soon as possible. We will delete aging data to free up space.
• Local Scratch: Local scratch is storage specific to each compute node your jobs run on, available at /local/ or /scratch/local/, or the Linux environment variable $LOCAL_SCRATCH. Local scratch is shared by all jobs running on the same node. To ensure data security, you must create a directory in local scratch before using it. Please clean up unneeded data as soon as possible. We will delete data as needed to free up space.
• Temporary Files (/tmp/ Directory): The /tmp/ directory is reserved for use by the Linux operating system on each compute node. Do not use this directory for research data storage, use local scratch instead. Some software automatically uses /tmp/ and must be configured to use local scratch. Notes are available in the /tmp/ directory page.