File Systems

The CRCD provides several distinct file spaces, each serving a different purpose:

Path Purpose Default Quota Snapshots
/ihome Home directories 75 GB Daily, 8-day retention
/vast High-performance project storage 1 TB Daily, 8-day retention
/ix, /ix1 Standard-tier project storage 5 TB 7-day retention

/ihome — Home Directories

Purpose: Houses user home directories.

Location: $HOME or /ihome/<primary group>/$USER

Underlying storage: VAST Data all-flash

Details:

The root of this filesystem contains subdirectories for each user group, with individual user directories within. Your home directory is the login directory and entry point when accessing the CRCD ecosystem. It is also the default location for configuration files, web portal session logs, and user-level Python and R environments.

Quota: 75 GB (cannot be increased). Use crc-quota to check utilization.

Permissions:

/ihome/<primary group>        root:<primary group>   750  (drwxr-x---)
/ihome/<primary group>/$USER  $USER:<primary group>  755  (drwxr-xr-x)

Snapshots: Daily snapshots with 8-day retention are available for file restoration.


/vast — High-Performance Project Storage

Purpose: High-throughput project and working data storage for I/O-intensive workloads.

Location: /vast/<primary group>

Underlying storage: VAST Data all-flash

Details:

PIs and group members can access this folder and create their own subfolders. Use this filesystem for data requiring high I/O throughput, such as large genomics datasets, ML training data, or intermediate results from compute jobs.

Quota: 1 TB default at no charge. Additional storage can be purchased a subsidized rate of $85/TB/year. Use crc-quota to check utilization.

Permissions:

/vast/<primary group>  <group owner>:<primary group>  770  (drwxrwx---)

Snapshots: Daily snapshots with 8-day retention are available for file restoration, consistent with the /ihome snapshot policy.


/ix and /ix1 — Standard-Tier Project Storage

Purpose: Enterprise storage for persistent project data.

Location: /ix/<primary group> or /ix1/<primary group>

Underlying storage: iXsystems enterprise storage, ZFS-backed with 12 TB NVMe caching

Details:

PIs and group members can access this folder and create their own subfolders. Use this filesystem to stage data for compute jobs or store results that need to persist long-term.

Quota: 5 TB default at no charge. Additional storage can be purchased in 5 TB increments at a subsidized rate of $65/TB/year. Use crc-quota to check utilization.

Permissions:

/ix/<primary group>   <group owner>:<primary group>  770  (drwxrwx---)
/ix1/<primary group>  <group owner>:<primary group>  770  (drwxrwx---)

Snapshots: /ix and /ix1 are not backed up. 7-day snapshots are available for accidental deletion recovery.


/bgfs and /zfs — Decommissioned

These filesystems are no longer being provisioned and are actively being decommissioned. If your group still has data on /bgfs, /zfs1, or /zfs2 and you haven't heard from our team about migrating it yet, please submit a help request and we will work with you to move your data to /ix1.


Frequently Asked Questions

A 5 TB location on /ix or /ix1 was not provisioned upon my faculty account's creation. How can I request this?

Please submit a help request and someone from the team will provision the space for you.

I've hit the limit on my initial 5 TB on /ix or /ix1. How do I request more space?

Additional storage is available at a subsidized rate of $65/TB/year. Use this form to request additional space.

How do I check how close I am to exceeding my storage quotas?

Use the crc-quota command:

[nlc60@login0 ~]$ crc-quota
User: 'nlc60'
-> ihome: 59.63 GB / 75.0 GB

Group: 'sam'
-> ix: 1.76 TB / 5.0 TB
-> vast: 0.43 TB / 1.0 TB

How do I restore files that were accidentally deleted?

Snapshots are available on /ihome, /vast, /ix, and /ix1. Submit a help request to request file restoration from a snapshot.