The /capstor/store mount point of the Lustre file system capstor  is meant to replace the GPFS /project and /store for project storage. The mount point is accessible from the User Access Nodes (UANs) of Alps clusters and their compute nodes.

Users are NOT supposed to use this filesystem as a scratch filesystem, but rather as a place to save results and share datasets

The mount point features subfolders named after tenants (CSCS, MCH,...) and customers (UserLab, EMPA, USI,...): on Daint.Alps and Eiger.Alps most projects are currently under the CSCS tenant, with customer folders under /capstor/store/cscs 

  • Users on Daint.Alps  can access their project folder with the $PROJECT environment variable, that targets your primary project folder. Please note that you will need to create your own sub-folders under the project folder 
  • The project folders can be found under /capstor/store/cscs/<customer>/<group_id> , where the string <customer>  depends on the customer type:
    • The <customer> string is userlab  for UserLab customers, that will find their project folders under /capstor/store/cscs/userlab
    • The <customer>  string of contractual partners corresponds to the contractual name listed in /capstor/store/cscs. For instance, EMPA users will have their projects listed under the empa folder, USI users under usi, and so on...
    • A quick way to list the content of your primary project folder is with ls /capstor/store/cscs/*/$(id -gn $USER). Similarly, if you want to check the content of a different <group_id> other than your primary project, you can use the command ls /capstor/store/cscs/*/<group_id>, provided that the folder exists

Data on /capstor/store is backed up, with no cleaning policy: it provides intermediate storage space for datasets, shared code or configuration scripts that need to be accessed from different vClusters. The performance of the Lustre file system (read and write) increases using larger files, therefore you should consider to archive small files with the tar utility.

Quota

Access to /capstor/store is granted to all users with a production or large development project upon request at the time of proposal submission: please note that applicants should justify the requested storage as well as they do for compute resources. Each group folder has a hard quota allocated, allowing its members to use a maximum number of files and disk space on a per-project basis.

Expiration 

All data will be deleted 3 months after the end of the project without further warning!