Storage Types – Tier 1

Technology Description

Tier 1 is built on  Dell EMC Isilon clustered storage.  This technology provides high data redundancy, snapshotting,  multiple access protocols, and disaster recovery. Tier 1 also provides Starfish data management web access, and Globus transfer access.

This tier is generally performant enough to use for hundreds of clustered compute jobs simultaneously and is typically the class of storage used for general file sharing, SMB and NFS.

To request a new allocation or update exiting allocations
please refer to the Storage Service Center Document.

Location(s)

Tier 1 servers are located in our Boston and Holyoke datacenters.  Depending on your workflow, you may want your lab’s Tier 1 storage to be located at one or the other.  FAS Research Computing support staff can discuss with you which tier  is right for your lab. See our Data Storage Service page for options.

Backup/Snapshots

Tier 1 offers regular snapshots, taken daily, going back 7 days.  So if you accidentally delete or modify a file, you can revert it back to the state it was in any of the previous 7 days.

Recovering Using a Snapshot

To recover a file from a snapshot, simply navigate to the .snapshot hidden directory in your Tier 1 storage root directory (e.g. /n/jharvard_lab/.snapshot) and find the file in one of the daily snapshot directories.  Once you find the version of the file you want, copy it back to its original location (or an alternate location) in your Tier 1 lab space.  For example:

[jharvard@boslogin01 ~]$ cd /n/jharvard_lab/Lab
[jharvard@boslogin01 Lab]$ ls
002_0216 002_0216_batch2 002_0316 002_0317 002_0318 002_0319 data
[jharvard@boslogin01 Lab]$ cd /n/jharvard_lab/.snapshot
[jharvard@boslogin01 .snapshot]$ ls -l
total 224
drwxr-s--- 4 root jharvard_lab 44 Nov 15 14:23 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-02-_00-00
drwxr-s--- 4 root jharvard_lab 44 Nov 15 14:23 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-03-_00-00
drwxr-s--- 4 root jharvard_lab 44 Nov 15 14:23 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-04-_00-00
drwxr-s--- 4 root jharvard_lab 44 Nov 15 14:23 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-05-_00-00
drwxr-s--- 4 root jharvard_lab 44 Nov 15 14:23 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-06-_00-00
drwxr-s--- 4 root jharvard_lab 44 Nov 15 14:23 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-07-_00-00
drwxr-s--- 4 root jharvard_lab 44 Nov 15 14:23 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-08-_00-00
[jharvard@boslogin01 .snapshot]$ cd jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-04-_00-00/
[jharvard@boslogin01 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-04-_00-00]$ ls
Lab Users
[jharvard@boslogin01 jharvard_lab_daily_2021-12-04-_00-00]$ cd Lab
[jharvard@boslogin01 Lab]$ ls
002_0216 002_0216_batch2 002_0316 002_0317 002_0318 002_0319 a_R1.fq.gz data
[jharvard@boslogin01 Lab]$ cp a_R1.fq.gz /n/jharvard_lab/Lab
[jharvard@boslogin01 Lab]$ cd /n/jharvard_lab/Lab
[jharvard@boslogin01 Lab]$ ls
002_0216 002_0216_batch2 002_0316 002_0317 002_0318 002_0319 a_R1.fq.gz data
[jharvard@boslogin01 Lab]$


Disaster Recovery Information

Disaster recovery copies are maintained for tier 1 storage. These are different from snapshots in that they are intended to allow FASRC to restore an entire filesystem/share in the event of catastrophic loss rather than allow access to individual files.