The CSF and RDS
IT Services’ Research Data Storage works very well with the Computational Shared Facility as a complete compute—storage package.
The CSF and Isilon are connected by fast, dedicated network infrastructure are so are ideal for researchers whose computation involves large amounts of data.
How much Isilon storage can CSF users have?
Any research project hosted on the CSF is entitled to storage subject to the usual limits and charges.
Is Isilon storage accessible from the compute nodes?
Yes. Researchers’ Isilon shares are made available across the CSF cluster, i.e., to all compute nodes as well as the login node.
In the usual way, via the Research Data Storage service request form.
N.B. When filling in the form, ensure you make it clear that your share is to be used primarily on the CSF. Assuming your application is successful, you will be allocated a NFS share, rather than a CIFS share.
Not directly – NFS shares are not directly mountable on user desktops or laptops. They are only accessible from the CSF, iCSF and similar IT Services-run systems.
However, NFS shares can be accessed on users’ desktops indirectly via a dedicated host named rds-ssh using SSH, SFTP and/or SSHFS programs. For more information about this, please see the RDS-SSH page.