$HOME file systems

Where does the data live?

We currently have 12 Sun Thumper X4500 which are used to store users' $HOME file systems. The users are distributed over 10 of these, leaving 2 for extra backups or "special purposes". If you are interested where you live, you can simply type mount | grep `whoami` and it will tell you for example 10.20.20.2 which translates to s02.

HELP! I deleted a file by accidents, can you retrieve it?

Yes, we can, but also can you. Try looking into the special .zfs directory:
cd ~/.zfs/snapshot; ls -l

There you will find directories named according to RFC3339. Don't be scared to much, it is easy: The directories look like 2008-08-18T121314, following the scheme YYYY-MM-DDTHHMMSS mean that this snapshot was taken on August 18th at about 12:13:14 (UTC). If you deleted a file now, feel free to go back to a former snapshot and copy the file to your current $HOME.

HELP! MY storage server died, where is my data

Depends, the data might not been touched by the crash and could be revived by exchanging the hardware. This might or might not be quick. The other choice we have, is to point the cluster to use another copy of your $HOME which should be on a remote server. This snapshot might not be very recent, usually up to 24h old, but still you will not lose to much work.

-- CarstenAulbert - 19 Aug 2008