CSL: Disk Usage Policy

The Computer Science Lab provides ample disk space for data storage to faculty, students, and staff. The following describes the various storage areas:

Home Directory: The home directory space is intended to provide the most secure, globally accessible space available within the department, with redundant backup mechanisms, fault-tolerant hardware and high-speed access from all desktop machines. As a result, your home directory has a set quota based on your classification within the department. To check your quota limits, please run the command: quota -v
Since this is a shared resource, please do not use this area for large computations sets with heavy reading and writing requirements. Please use either local storage (preferred) or temporary storage.
Temporary Space: /usr/project/xtmp/ is a multi-TB temporary storage area that you can use to store data for limited periods of time. For most uses, please create a subdirectory, and store your data there. Any files in this area that have not been accessed in 180 days or more will be automatically removed. Also, this directory is not backed up! Please see /usr/project/xtmp/README_XTMP for more information.
Local Disk Space: /var/tmp/ is an area on each host's local disk. Depending on the machine, this space could be quite large. You can create subdirectories and store files in these areas, but please remember to remove them when no longer needed. Keep in mind, this space is not backed up, and files not accessed or modified in more than 30 days are automaticaly removed. However, if you create files in /var/tmp/local/, this directory will not be purged of old files -- but it is still not backed up.
Project Space: Project space is available on the department's Network Appliance filer. For moderately-sized requests, this is the most flexible project space solution, since the space can easily be increased if more space is required. For extremely large project space requirements, an external disk can be purchased through grants. As in the past, the lab will provide hosting for these external disks. Note that large project spaces may have limitations on the availability of backups; please contact the lab staff if you have questions. All project spaces will be auto-mounted under the /usr/project/ directory on all trusted departmental machines.
Since this is a shared resource, please do not use this area for large computations sets with heavy reading and writing requirements. Please use either local storage (preferred) or temporary storage.
Course Pages: The Course Pages directory is availble to store files to that relate to the specified course. For example: lecture slides, assignment submissions, etc. See directory /usr/project/courses/
Course Web Docs: The Course Web Docs directory is availble to store files to be published on the web server that relate to the specified course. The files will be owned by the instructor of the course. See directory /usr/project/cwd/.
Mail Spool Directory: The Mail Spool directory is where all users' incoming e-mail is stored. No quota is enforced on this filesystem so users will never lose incoming e-mail due to a quota issue. However users are encouraged to intelligently manage their e-mail inboxes, both to provide quick access to their e-mail as well as to lessen their impact on this shared department resource. It should be noted that this filesystem is mirrored to provide "snapshots" of user's e-mail inboxes. See directory /var/mail/.
Requesting Quota Increase: If none of the above solutions satisfy your needs for disk space, please contact the Lab Staff with your request. These requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine if an increase in quota is needed. Usually, use of project space can satisfy such needs.
Understanding and Monitoring Your Disk Quota: Please see this page for more information about disk quotas, and strategies that can be used to actively or automatically monitor your disk quota usage.