Backups and Extra Storage

Backups

Lab servers are on RAID systems which means that they should be safe to drive failures.
However, no system is perfect and can fail without notice. Additionally, user error can result in loss of files (e.g. "rm"ing the wrong file or directory).
Therefore backing up important data is an important part of bioinformatics.
Every user should create a directory called "username_backup" within their home directory. Thus for the user mlangill:

mkdir /home/mlangill/mlangill_backup

Then you can move or copy important files into that directory and they will be automatically backed up to another server (i.e. Andoria). This backup happens each night.
You can also create symlinks to files or directories within this backup directory to other directories to avoid moving files around. For example, if you were working on an important project located at /home/mlangill/project1, you can back it up by creating a symlink:

ln -s /home/mlangill/project1 /home/mlangill/backups/

Storage space is limited on lab servers. Files that are not used often (e.g. archived sequencing or project folders) can be removed and stored on the andoria server easily.
There is a directory on both Kronos and Vulcan that is mounted to andoria, meaning that any files placed there will be copied to andoria. Once copied over the files in your home directory can then be removed, which will free up disk space on Kronos or Vulcan.
The special directory is at /home/storage. Copying of files into that directory require sudo access so please ask someone do it for you if you do not have sudo access.
Files should be place in a subdirectory with the correct username.
#For example:

sudo mkdir /home/storage/mlangill
sudo mv large_file /home/storage/mlangill

NOTE: that the mv command will generate a warning which can be ignored: mv: failed to preserve ownership for.
Alternatively you can first copy and then remove the files and this will not generate a warning but the result is the same.