Storage Types – Tier 3

 

Technology Description

The NESE Tape System is comprised of a tape library and a disk-based frontend. The tape library itself has 6658 tape slots and 28 IBM TS1160 tape drives (each tape will hold ~20TB).  The IBM Spectrum Scale disk-based frontend buffer storage employs three storage enclosures (with a total of 1.2PB of usable space) and three systems (to manage the storage itself).

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

Location

The NESE Tape System is located in the Massachusetts Green High Performance Center in Holyoke, MA., adjacent to the Cannon compute cluster.

Snapshot or backup schedule

Since the NESE Tape System is not an active datastore used in day to day research, these schedules are not applicable. Tape system users move data in and out by moving data to the frontend disk-based system to have it added to tape and retrieve information by request to the system itself.

DR explanation

Each tape has a copy to greatly reduce the possibility of data loss.

Since the tape library itself is located completely in the MGHPCC, there is currently no formal DR strategy. Arrangements can be made to send tapes offsite to a commercial data storage vendor if desired (enter a ticket at portal.rc.fas.harvard.edu for details).

Usage/recommendations

• Keep the number files in a single directory to less than 10K if at all possible.
• Smaller files (less than 1GB) can be problematic for any storage system. If your data has many of these, please tar or zip them up into a larger file before transferring them.

Lead Time

There is a minimum setup time of (TBD – currently 2-3 weeks). This timeframe assumes we receive the completed tape setup from our service partner NESE without delay. Delays there are beyond our control and could increase lead time. Please note that any storage changes made after the 15th of the month will be reflected in the following month’s billing.

Access

Globus

NESE Tape Globus Access and Globus Docs

MinIO/S3

https://docs.min.io/minio/baremetal/reference/minio-mc.html
https://docs.min.io/minio/baremetal/console/minio-console.html

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This document is a work-in-progress