Group Storage

See also: Storage overview | Storage Manager | Group Storage | Ceph | Local (on nodes) disks reservation

	Note
	This page is actively maintained by the Grid'5000 team. If you encounter problems, please report them (see the Support page). Additionally, as it is a wiki page, you are free to make minor corrections yourself if needed. If you would like to suggest a more fundamental change, please contact the Grid'5000 team.

This service provides large storage spaces, possibly shared between multiple Grid'5000 users. Those storage spaces are accessible on Grid'5000 over NFS.

For smaller storage space (under 200GB), asking for a quota extension for your home may be a better solution if you do not need to share data between users.

Remind that Grid'5000 does NOT have a BACKUP service for storage it provides: it is your responsibility to save important data outside Grid'5000 (or at least to copy data to several Grid'5000 sites in order to increase redundancy).

Using an existing storage space

You must be member of the group associated to storage space to access it. Contact the storage space owner to request an access.

Once you have been authorized, the storage space is available from nodes and frontends at:

node:cd /srv/storage/storage_name@server_address

	Note
	Autofs is used to remotely mount storage. So they are automatically mounted when accessed. The file systems are then automatically unmounted after a period of inactivity. That's why you may not see the directory when doing ls /srv/storage, you have to access it before with cd /srv/storage/my-storage@server for autofs to mount it.

	Note
	By default, the storage is created with some specific rights and ACLs: s on group permission: New files will be created with the same group as the parent directory sticky bit (t): Prevent deletion of file not owned. g::rwx: ACL: Sub-directory will be create with 'rwx' access rights for group, you can check the ACLs with the getfacl command

For example:

node:cd /srv/storage/my_storage@storage1.lille.grid5000.fr

We strongly advise you to add a symbolic link to this path in your home for convenience :

node:ln -s /srv/storage/my_storage@storage1.lille.grid5000.fr ~/my_storage

	Warning
	This will only work from the frontends or from a node with nfs,big or std environment. Otherwise, you will need to use the storage API to enable access to the storage space. Contact the Grid'5000 team if needed.

Requesting a new storage space

To request a new storage space, please send an email to support-staff@lists.grid5000.fr. Please copy/paste the following text and fill all the required information

• Email subject:

Group storage creation

• Email content:

 What is your Grid'5000 login ?
 <...>
 What name do you want for your storage space ? (only lowercase letters and numbers are allowed)
 <...>
 On which site do you want the storage space ? You can also specify the server.
 <...>
 What is the name of the group you want to be link with this storage space ? (must start by "sto-", only lowercase letters, numbers and hyphen (-) allowed)
 sto-<...>
 Does the group already exists (from another storage space) ?
 Yes/No
 What size do you require for the storage space?
 XXX GBytes/TBytes
 What is the intended usage, in a few lines ?
 <...>
 What is the expiration date (We will contact you before removing your storage) ?
 <...>

The Grid'5000 team will create the storage space, and if the group is new, will create and set you as an owner of the group.

Available servers for storage spaces

Site	Server Name	Size	Status	Link Speed	Notes
Lille	storage1.lille.grid5000.fr	90TB		50 Gbps
Lille	storage2.lille.grid5000.fr	90TB		50 Gbps
Lyon	storage1.lyon.grid5000.fr	75TB		10 Gbps
Rennes	storage1.rennes.grid5000.fr	100TB		10 Gbps
Nancy	talc-data2.nancy.grid5000.fr	200TB		10 Gbps
Sophia	storage1.sophia.grid5000.fr	30TB		1 Gbps
Luxembourg	storage1.luxembourg.grid5000.fr	40TB		20 Gbps

Asking for storage extension

You can also contact the Grid'5000 team to get more space or to extend the expiration date of your storage. Just send a mail to support-staff@lists.grid5000.fr with Group storage extension as subject and include the name of your storage, what extension do you need and why do you need it.

Managing the group of users allowed to access the storage

You can add/remove users from a managed group from UMS, in the groups tab: https://api.grid5000.fr/stable/users/

Otherwise, you may want to use the REST API.

To get information about a group you may do:

 frontend:curl 'https://api.grid5000.fr/stable/users/groups/sto-mystorage' | jq 
 {
   "uid": 1234,
   "name": "sto-mystorage",
   "enabled": true,
   "system": false,
   "is_gga": false,
   "freely_join": false,
   "freely_leave": true,
   "created_at": "2019-03-06T09:11:13.000Z",
   "updated_at": "2019-03-06T09:22:12.000Z",
   "description": "My awesome group for storage",
   "owners": [
     "dtennant"
   ],
   "delegates": [
     "msmith",
     "dtennant"
   ],
   "members": [
     {"user_uid": "dtennant", "membership_expiration": null},
     {"user_uid": "msmith", "membership_expiration": null},
     {"user_uid": "pcapaldi", "membership_expiration": null},
   ],
   "site": false
 }

Note

The following point are relevant to basic group management: groups have owners, delegates and members. Owners and delegates have basically the same access rights with respect to membership management, but managing the group's meta-data such as its description is reserved to owners. You must be a member to be able to access the storage. An owner/delegate is NOT automatically add as a member. freely_join: if true, users can freely add themselves to the group. If not, one of the group's delegate must add the user. freely_leave: if true, users can freely remove themselves to the group. If not, one of the group's delegate must remove the user.

To manage a group, for example adding 'jwhittaker' as a member, first we get the current group configuration:

 frontend:curl 'https://api.grid5000.fr/stable/users/groups/sto-mystorage' | jq '.' > group_config.json

Then edit group_config.json by adding 'jwhittaker' to the members array with your favorite text editor. Now we just need to send the new configuration to the API:

 frontend:curl -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/json' 'https://api.grid5000.fr/stable/users/groups/sto-mystorage' -d '@group_config.json' | jq

You may have to wait up to 15 minutes for the changes to take effect.