Dear Zeus HPC cluster users,

this is to let you know that we have new parallel file system available for testing and use on Zeus HPC. The new storage utilizes both existing file servers in parallel (zeus5 & 6) over 40Gbps Infiniband fabric, which should bring faster read/write access for jobs. As you may know, users’ home folders are served by one file server of Zeus (zeus5) over NFS network share, and this have led in some cases to slowing down of the file system and causing overall slowdown and poor responsiveness of HPC.

The new file system does not replace users’ homes, but is intended as a runtime space for jobs. The location of this new storage is at /mnt/beegfs/scratch/yourusername, where each user has a working folder. You can also access this space by the link from your home folder, i.e. /home/yourusername/scratch
If you like to launch jobs from this file system, you need to copy your job/project folder to /home/yourusername/scratch and submit your slurm job form there or from /mnt/beegfs/scratch/yourusername if you prefer. This would, in theory, reduce the load on Zeuse’s NFS server, which serves user’s homes.

After your job completes, it is advisable (although not necessary) to copy your results from /home/yourusername/scratch/… to your home folder /home/yourusername for safekeeping. Scratch folder is not backed up and during the test period, there may be a chance of some failures.

Best Regards,
Alex Pedcenko