GPFS is a 1.1 petabyte high-performance storage system that supports high-speed file operations on our HPC and Spear systems. If you are logged into the HPC or Spear, you are using GPFS.

The GPFS storage system houses data for both research groups and private home directories. Individuals, departments, or research groups can purchase additional storage space and manage shared group access to files and folders.

Who has access?

All RCC users are entitled to 150GB of storage space on GPFS.  We automatically allocate this space when you setup your RCC account. We also offer a large, general purpose scratch volume for job I/O on a per-request basis. If you are interested in gaining access to scratch space, you can send us a support request.

For those research groups that need more parallel storage space, we offer options for purchasing storage, either on-demand or on a five-year basis.

Hardware and software

The software platform is IBM Spectrum Scale GPFS. This is a commercial product, paid for and licensed per terabyte. We subscribe to annual support through our vendor, Lenovo/IBM.

The hardware platform consists of two Lenovo D3284 enclosures, along with two storage heads, and a third "quorum" server.  The number of physical disks in the devices are 84 (168 total) 10TB 7200 RPM SAS drives.