Backup on Betzy, Fram, Saga and NIRD

Warning

Only home and project folders with enforced quotas are backed up

Any $HOME area using more than 20 GiB or more than 100 000 files is not backed up. To have your $HOME backed up, you need to shrink the disk usage below the 20 GiB limit and below 100 000 files and notify support.

If dusage reports that no limits are set, this means that you do not have disk quotas activated and this means that these folders are not backed up.

Betzy, Fram and Saga

The storage backup on Betzy, Fram and Saga happens in two steps: first as a nightly backup from the respective machines over to NIRD, and then NIRD is backed up as described in the NIRD section below.

The following areas on Betzy, Fram and Saga are backed up nightly to NIRD:

  • /cluster/home, excluding $HOME/nobackup and $HOME/tmp

  • /cluster/projects

The following areas are not backed up:

  • /cluster/share

  • /cluster/work

The work area /cluster/work also enforces an automatic cleanup strategy, and is not meant for permanent storage. Files in this area will be deleted after 42 or 21 days, depending on the storage capacity, see User work area for details.

Where the backups are located

HOME: The nightly backups of the $HOME areas on Betzy, Fram and Saga end up in your $HOME area on NIRD, which is geo-replicated between NIRD-TOS (Tromsø) and NIRD-TRD (Trondheim):

  • /nird/home/$USER/backups/betzy

  • /nird/home/$USER/backups/fram

  • /nird/home/$USER/backups/saga

To recover a deleted or overwritten file in /cluster/home/$USER on either Betzy, Fram or Saga go to your home directory on NIRD, go to the backup folder and then browse in the directory corresponding to the HPC system you come from for the file you want to restore. You can then use rsync to transfer a copy to your home directory on the HPC system (see also our guide about File transfer). If you have difficulty accessing NIRD, please contact support.

PROJECTS on Fram and Betzy: The nnXXXXk project areas on Betzy and Fram are backed up to Saga:

  • /cluster/backup/betzy/projects/nnXXXXk

  • /cluster/backup/fram/projects/nnXXXXk

PROJECTS on Saga: The nnXXXXk project areas on Saga are backed up to Betzy:

  • /cluster/backup/saga/projects/nnXXXXk

If you have project access to the cluster where backups are stored, then you can retrieve them yourself. If you cannot access the cluster that holds the project backups, please contact support and we will help you restoring your data.

NIRD

Both home directories (/nird/home/$USER) and project areas (/nird/projects/NSxxxxK) have backup in the form of snapshots and geo-replication (only NS projects are geo-replicated, not the NN project backups from Betzy, Fram and Saga mentioned above).

Snapshots are taken with the following frequencies:

  • /nird/home/$USER:

    • daily snapshots for the last 7 days

    • weekly snapshots for the last 6 weeks

    • this also includes the nightly backup of the Betzy, Fram and Saga home directory as described above

  • /nird/projects/NSxxxxK:

    • daily snapshots for the last 7 days

    • weekly snapshots for the last 6 weeks

  • /tos-project4/fram, /trd-project4/saga, /trd-project4/betzy:

    • site dependent, but daily for a few days and weekly for a few weeks

Where the snapshots are located

The NIRD $HOME and NS project snapshots are available under:

  • /nird/home/u1/.snapshots

  • /nird/projects/NSxxxxK/.snapshots

The snapshots of the NN project backups from Betzy, Fram and Saga are available under:

  • /tos-project4/fram/backups/.snapshots

  • /trd-project4/saga/backups/.snapshots

  • /trd-project4/betzy/backups/.snapshots

How to recover deleted/overwritten data

A deleted/overwritten file in the home directory on NIRD can be recovered like this:

$ cp /nird/home/u1/.snapshots/DATE/$USER/mydir/myfile /nird/home/$USER/mydir/

Note that snapshots are taken every night only. This means that deleted files which did not exist yet yesterday cannot be recovered from snapshots.

To recover a deleted or overwritten file /nird/projects/NSxxxxK/dataset1/myfile, you can copy a snapshot back to the folder and restore the deleted/overwritten file:

$ cp /nird/projects/NSxxxxK/.snapshots/DATE/dataset1/myfile /nird/projects/NSxxxxK/dataset1/

Select the DATE accordingly to your case.