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Migration to EPCCFS storage

Important

This information was last updated on 16 Sep 2026. The migration is now complete.

This section of the documentation covers the process of moving from the current storage for compute jobs (/work file system) to new storage (/epccfs file system).

The current /work storage is coming to its end of life so on Wed 16 Sep 2026 we moved to new storage mounted on Cirrus login and compute nodes as /epccfs.

Migration process

There was full maintenance session (starting at 09:00 BST on Wed 16 Sep 2026) with no jobs running on compute nodes for this switch. During this maintenance session, the following high level steps were followed:

  1. All jobs Pending in the queue were deleted
    • This step was necessary as jobs in the Pending queue before the switch would have expected to be able to write to /work. As this was not be possible after the switch, any pending jobs would have failed when the system returned.
  2. Current /work storage changed to read-only mode
  3. /epccfs storage made available in read/write-mode
  4. Final testing of /epccfs
  5. Service returned to users

The current /work storage will remain available in read-only mode until at least 21 Nov 2026 for users to copy over any data they wish to access/keep on the new /epccfs storage.

Impacts for users

  • All current Cirrus projects and user accounts have directories on the new EPCCFS storage with quotas set as they are on the old /work storage.
  • Any jobs in Pending state at the start of the maintenance session for the switch were deleted. You must resubmit them (using the new /epccfs storage).
  • Any jobs submitted after the maintenance session must write to locations in /epccfs. Any jobs that attempt to write to locations in /work will fail.
  • You are no longer able to write data to any locations in /work.
  • The existing data will remain available in read-only mode until at least 21 Nov 2026.
    • Users should copy any data they wish to keep off /work before 21 Nov 2026.

EPCCFS storage

Note

This is a copy of the documentation in the Data section of the Cirrus User Guide.

No backup

There are no backups of any data on the EPCCFS storage. You should ensure you have copies of any critical data in a secure location to protect against loss of data from hardware failures.

Every project has an allocation on the EPCCFS storage and your project's space can always be accessed via the path /epccfs/[project-code]. The EPCCFS storage provides a large capacity (more than 30 PB) and is currently implemented using the VAST technology.

Ideally, EPCCFS storage should only contain data that is:

  • actively in use;
  • recently generated and in the process of being saved elsewhere; or
  • being made ready for up-coming work.

In practice it may be convenient to keep copies of datasets on the EPCCFS fstorage that you know will be needed at a later date. However, make sure that important data is always backed up elsewhere and that your work would not be significantly impacted if the data on the EPCCFS storage was lost.

If you have data on the EPCCFS storage that you are not going to need in the future please delete it.

Directory locations

You can find your directory on the EPCCFS at:

/epccfs/<project code>/<project code>/<username>

For example, if your username is auser and you are in the e05 project, then your EPCCFS directory will be at:

/epccfs/e05/e05/auser

Copying data to /epccfs from /work file systems

You can use the standard Linux cp command to copy data from other Cirrus file systems to EPCCFS or vice versa. For example, to transfer the file important-data.tar.gz from the /work file system to /epccfs you would use the following command (assuming you are user auser in project e05):

cp /work/e05/e05/auser/important-data.tar.gz /epccfs/e05/e05/auser/

(remember to replace the project code and username with your own username and project code).

Use rclone parallel local data transfers for large datasets

If you are transferring a large amount of data to EPCCFS, you should consider using rclone local data transfer (perhaps in a serial job submission script) rather than using the basic cp command.

Quotas on EPCCFS

As for the other Cirrus storage systems, all projects are assigned a quota on EPCCFS. The project PI or manager can split this quota up between users or groups of users if they wish.

You can view any EPCCFS quotas that apply to your account by logging into SAFE and navigating to the page for your Cirrus login account.

  1. Log into SAFE
  2. Use the "Login accounts" menu and select your Cirrus login account
  3. The "Login account details" table lists any user or group quotas that are linked with your account. (If there is no quota shown for a row then you have an unlimited quota for that item, but you may still may be limited by another quota.)

Tip

Quota and usage data on SAFE is updated twice daily so may not be exactly up to date with the situation on the systems themselves.

You can also query quotas that apply to your current EPCCFS directory from the the command line using the df -h $PWD command, for example:

auser@uan01:/epccfs/e05/e05/auser> df -h $PWD
Filesystem                          Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
fs02.naidin.epcc.ed.ac.uk:/cirrus  8.8T  1.8G  8.8T   1% /mnt/nfs/epccfs

Snapshots on EPCCFS

EPCCFS retain snapshots which can be used to recover past versions of files. Snapshots are taken weekly (for each of the past 5 weeks), daily (for each of the past 8 days) and hourly (for each of the last 25 hours). You can access the snapshots at .snapshot from any given directory on EPCCFS.