“Previously, a user’s project and their work areas were separate, making it extremely difficult to share data between the two. As a result of the new directory structure, users are no longer required to change permissions on their project directory to share data within the project, making it much easier to manage.”
-Chris Fusion User Support Specialist
The OLCF replaces Widow with the next generation Atlas file system
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) has introduced the next generation of data management with Atlas, a new center-wide file system that delivers increased capacity, greater performance, and a new directory structure for OLCF computational users.
Available to all OLCF users, Atlas provides a location to temporarily store large amounts of data produced on three OLCF systems: Titan, Eos, and Rhea. It replaces the OLCF’s Widow file system.
Atlas is organized by project, with work areas for users and projects located under a new project directory. Users on multiple projects now also have multiple work areas.
“Previously, a user’s project and their work areas were separate, making it extremely difficult to share data between the two,” said user support specialist Chris Fusion. “As a result of the new directory structure, users are no longer required to change permissions on their project directory to share data within the project, making it much easier to manage.”
The system itself is divided into two separate file systems, Atlas1 and Atlas2, together providing 32 petabytes of capacity and greater than 1 terabyte per second of aggregate performance—a huge step up from the previous file system.
The new file system also supports more than one metadata server, improving metadata operations, such as creating files and listing and giving twice the aggregate performance across the system.
“The existence of multiple file systems increases our ability to keep at least one file system available at all times,” said Dustin Leverman, deployment lead for Atlas. “This helps ensure that our users are still able to manage their project data at any given time. Furthermore, the increased capacity and greater performance will allow users even greater depth in their research, with less restrictions on data, both how fast it’s generated and the overall amount.” — by Austin Koenig
