The HECToR Archiver is now Read Only. Please use the UK Research Data Facility (UK-RDF) for long term data storage. Instructions are provided below to help you list and retrieve data from the Archiver.
This section provides an introduction to the HECToR Archive service and information on archive quotas.
Overview
The archive mechanism is based on the incumbent backup product, Symantec's Enterprise NetBackup.
The archiver can be used in two ways:
- The first is based on moving files into an archive area. Any file placed into the directory ARCH in your "work" directory will be archived during the archive run. Files placed into ARCH2 will be archived twice (for additional security).
- The second is a command line interface that users can use to archive files directly from their original location.
Note: you can only access the archiver from the HECToR "work" filesystem. Any files that you wish to archive must therefore be placed on the "work" filesystem prior to archiving. Similarly, data from the archive can only be restored to the "work" filesystem.
The archival tool that performs the scheduled archive functions will also serve requests over the network from the Client Side tools. These tools backup files and directories as and when you request it. They also service retrievals, queries and deletions. The Client Side tools are accessible from all the HECToR login nodes.
The HECToR archive consists of 1300 800GB tapes, with a max capacity of approximately 1.02 PetaBytes.
Archive Quotas
Quotas will be allocated in GigaBytes and current quota usage and limits can be queried from the command line using the cresquota command detailed below.
Querying Archive Quota - cresquota
The cresquota command prints out the quota allocation table. It contains the list of quotas and the current consumption for all users.
Usage of the command is:
cresquota [-k|-m|-t]
where the options are:
- -k
- show quota in kiloBytes
- -m
- show quota in MegaBytes
- -t
- show quota in TeraBytes
Note: A "*" in the output means the quota has been exceeded.
For example, the default will show your quota in GigaBytes:
user@nid00012:~> cresquota User Name Group Name User (GB) Group (GB) Quota (GB) --------- ---------- --------- ---------- ---------- user x01 0.0 145.3 4500 user x01-test 0.0 1.0 500 user x04 0.0 2.0 4096
Quotas are checked before a file/directory is archived. If there is insufficient quota to archive all files, the archive will fail e.g. no partial archives will be created.
Note: you can only query your own archive quota. PIs and Project Managers can view and edit the archive quotas for their projects/groups using the HECToR SAFE.
