OxCIN storage

This page summarises the main OxCIN-managed storage locations available on shared servers and Linux desktops, what each one is for, and the trade-offs between speed, protection, and quota.

Overview

OxCIN storage is split into a few common areas:

home directories for configuration files, scripts, and smaller working files
scratch space for active analysis and temporary data
shared project storage for medium-term datasets and results
OHBA group and project shares for OHBA-hosted work

These locations are designed for different purposes, so the right choice depends on whether you need performance, backup protection, long-term retention, or shared access.

Summary of storage locations

Location	Typical use	Default quota	Performance	Backup
`/home/fs0/<username>`	Shell profiles, scripts, small working files	20 GB	Low	Yes
`/vols/Scratch/<username>`	Active HPC work and temporary analysis data	200 GB	High	No
`/vols/Data/<project>`	Shared project datasets and results	As requested	Lower than scratch	Yes
`/ohba/pi/<pi shortname>`	OHBA research group storage	As requested	Low	Yes
`/ohba/projects/<projectname>`	OHBA shared project storage	As requested	Low	Yes

Which location should I use?

Use these rough rules of thumb:

put scripts, configuration files, and smaller personal files in your home directory
use scratch for active processing and transient intermediate data
use /vols/Data or OHBA shared storage for data that needs to be retained and shared
avoid keeping important irreplaceable data only on scratch

If a dataset is important, relatively stable, or expensive to recreate, it should normally live in backed-up project storage rather than scratch.

Checking usage

How you check usage depends on the storage type.

Shared project areas

For /vols/Data, OHBA project areas, and shared scratch folders, check usage with df after changing into the relevant folder:

cd /vols/Data/myproject
df -h .

To see which directories are using space:

du -sh *

Or sort by size:

du -sk * | sort -n

Home and personal scratch quotas

Home directories and user scratch space are quota-controlled. Check them with:

quota

This reports your usage for locations such as /home/fs0 and /vols/Scratch.

If you run out of space

For shared file systems such as /vols/Data, once the underlying file system is full it can be awkward to recover space quickly because of the copy-on-write storage model.

If you hit a space limit:

Contact computing-help@oxcin.ox.ac.uk to request more space.
If necessary, truncate a large file before deleting it:

cat /dev/null > largefile

That can help free space more reliably before you remove the file completely.

Backups and recovery

Backed-up locations include:

/home/fs0
/vols/Data
/ohba/*

These areas have browseable snapshots. On the relevant access machine, snapshots are available through a hidden .zfs directory at the root of the share.

Examples:

/home/fs0/.zfs
/vols/Data/myproject/.zfs
/ohba/projects/myproject/.zfs

Within .zfs/snapshot/ you will find dated snapshot folders. To recover a file, copy it from the appropriate snapshot back to your live folder.

Older recoveries may require help from the IT team, so email computing-help@oxcin.ox.ac.uk if you need restoration from an earlier point in time.

Scratch backup expectations

Scratch is not intended as a backed-up storage location. It is suitable for in-progress computation, but not as the only copy of important data.

For important data on scratch:

move stable results to /vols/Data or another backed-up location
consider using the archive service for point-in-time protection

Technical notes

OxCIN storage uses ZFS-based file systems with integrity checking and encryption at rest. The different storage areas are configured with different resilience and performance trade-offs:

/home/fs0, /vols/Data, and /ohba/* prioritise resilience and protection
/vols/Scratch prioritises performance for shared compute workloads

That is why scratch is faster but offers less protection, while project storage is slower but better suited to retained research data.