[Labs-l] On disk use

Fri Jul 11 16:23:53 UTC 2014

Hey all.

So, a quick reminder to every labs user: project space (/data/project)
is on a networked drive.  While it provides a lot of space and is
conveniently accesible to all instances of a project, using it /does/
incur a performance cost.

Whenever a service you are running on a labs instance needs to have
/local/ storage (that is, does not need to share the data with other
instances), it is generally preferable to _not_ use /data/project for
it.  Being careful about when you use this filesystem means improved
performance and reliability for everyone.

On Tool Labs, where your tools can be moved arbitrarily from one node to
another, this mostly does not apply - you should be storing any
persistent data in your tools' homes (which are on /data/project).  It
*is* possible to store data locally to the instance where the tool is
running (for temporary data that does not need to persist from one run
to another), provided you are careful about cleaning up after yourself.

In any case, if you have any question about your disk usage or ways in
which you can improve performance, don't hesitate to ask on-list or
communicate with me by email or on IRC.

-- Marc