Center for Computational Research

How to Check your Quota

How to Purchase More Storage

Backup & Data Retention Policies

How to Request the Restore of Data

CCR provides a wide variety of options for researchers to store their data.  See below for a comparison of the various options.  If you are unsure what option works best for your group, please contact CCR Help.

1.  EMC Isilon Network-Attached Storage (NAS) - CCR provides a total of 3 PB of available disk storage to all the clusters in the Center for user home directories and group shared project directories.  This is an enterprise-level, highly redundant storage solution designed for 99% uptime.  All directories are backed up off-site nightly by UBIT

Home Directories:

• Directories are available on the clusters and accessible from all compute nodes.
• Default user quota is 5GB.
• Backed up by UB's Central Computing Enterprise Infrastructure Services department

Home directory location:  /user/UBIT_username
Example: /user/ccrguest

Project Directories:

• Additional disk space is available for research groups in the project directories.
• Faculty interested in project disk space should contact the CCR help
• The default project directory quota is 500GB.  The quota can be increased to 1TB without charge.
• Backed up by UB's Central Computing Enterprise Infrastructure Services department
• If you require more than 1TB of storage, additional space can be purchased at a rate of $663.78/TB.  NOTE: Rate is for UB faculty and staff only.  
• External user price: $1000/TB
• NOTE: Faculty with joint positions at UB and Roswell can only qualify for the UB rate if they use UB funds to purchase the storage.
• This rate is good for the 5 year lifespan of the storage warranty (December 2020).  After this time, you must buy in to any new storage CCR upgrades to. 

Projects directory location - depends on your affiliation:

• /projects/academic/group_name - for all faculty of UB
• /projects/industry/group_name - for all industry partners (could be project name, company name, or other group name - if you're not sure, ask CCR staff)
• /projects/rpci  - for all Roswell Park affiliated users

2.  Global Scratch Space - IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS)

• CCR provides 500TB of high performance global scratch space.
• Accessible from all front end servers and compute nodes.
• Available to all users for temporary use.  Just create yourself a directory in /gpfs/scratch
• Designed for high speed, parallel computing, large datasets, with the fastest I/O at the Center
• Data that has not been accessed in more than 30 days is subject to removal by an automated scrubber script.  Please remove all data promptly after your job completes.
• There is NO backup of data in /gpfs/scratch
• There is no guarantee of uptime

Global scratch location:  /gpfs/scratch

NOTE: It is an outright violation of University at Buffalo computing policy to attempt to circumvent this policy.  Anyone found attempting to modify file dates to get around the scrubber will have their data removed without notice and their account deactivated.  We actively monitor for this!

3.  Archival (budget) Storage - as of March 2019 this is no longer available for new purchases

Users are encouraged to use UB Box for archival storage

• Lower-tier storage than the Enterprise Isilon networked-attached storage solution used for home and project directories
• There is NO backup of data for the budget storage directories
• There is no guarantee of uptime or performance on budget storage
• Cost is $150/TB with a minimum purchase of 10TB.  Initially, maximum purchase is 50TB.
• NOTE: Rate is for UB faculty and staff only.  External collaborators must pay an extra UB check fee.  Please contact CCR staff for a quote.
• NOTE: Faculty with joint positions at UB and Roswell can only qualify for the UB rate if they use UB funds to purchase the storage.
• This rate is good for the 5 year lifespan of the storage warranty (January 2020).  After this time, you must buy in to any new storage CCR upgrades to. 
• Available to groups actively using CCR compute resources.
• Available only internally to CCR servers and clusters.  Not available as a file mount to external machines.
• For those seeking a storage solution outside of CCR, please consider using UB Box

Budget Data directory location - depends on your affiliation:

• /projects/academic/group_name - for all faculty of UB
• /projects/industry/group_name - for all industry partners (could be project name, company name, or other group name - if you're not sure, ask CCR staff)
• /projects/rpci  - for all Roswell Park affiliated users

4.  Local Scratch Space:

• All servers and compute nodes in all the clusters have local disk space (/scratch).
• This scratch space is available to batch jobs running on the clusters.
• Data on local scratch may be subject to removal as soon as the job completes
• There is NO backup of data in /scratch.

5. Cloud storage:

• Accessible only from cloud instances
• Cost is $100/TB PER YEAR
• There is NO backup of data for the research cloud
• There is no guarantee of uptime or performance on cloud storage
• Available only to research groups with active cloud subscriptions
• More details about the cloud cost structure

Comparison of CCR Storage Options

*Price for UB faculty groups.  For all others, please contact CCR Help for a quote