Storage

Clusterware environments can be configured with a number of different storage areas which can be used for a variety of purposes - the areas include:

Local scratch

Usually the best-performing storage device with the lowest contention, local scratch is persistent only whilst jobs are running, and may be cleared automatically between jobs. This is a good location for temporary data that does not need to be shared between compute nodes - data stored here should be copied to persistent storage at the end of each job.

Shared scratch

A temporary storage area available to all compute nodes for storage of files during jobs. Data stored here should be copied to persistent storage at the end of each job.

Home directories

A persistent storage area available to all compute nodes for storage of data files used within the compute environment. Whilst often not a high-performance filesystem, your home directory can be used to store data on a longer-term basis. Use of compression utilities is recommended to maximise the available capacity.