File Storage

The department provides centralized file storage to faculty, staff, and graduate students in the form of home directories. Project space, to be shared among collaborators, can also be purchased.

We charge for storage based on actual disk usage, rather than available space. Depending on your storage needs and usage, you may want to also consider other campus collaboration options.

We are also coordinating a bDrive Paid Storage Option, so Engineering faculty and staff can deal with bDrive storage limits being imposed by the Google Cost Reduction Project.

File storage and home directories used for instructional purposes are provided separately and are not documented here.

EECS Home Directories

As part of the departmental computing account, all faculty, staff, and graduate students are entitled to a home directory on the department’s primary fileserver, home.eecs.berkeley.edu. Files on home are accessible via both NFS and CIFS protocols, so they can be directly accessed from any of our supported operating systems.

ACCESSING HOME DIRECTORIES FROM UNIX

Individual home directories can be exported to various unix systems by request. All home directories are available on the departmental unix login server, login.eecs.berkeley.edu. Unix machines which are configured to use the departmental NIS maps will typically automount user home directories as /home/eecs/user. Unix machines not using the departmental automount maps may wish to manually mount from the appropriate cluster node, depending on username; see the File Storage FAQ page for specifics.

ACCESSING HOME DIRECTORIES FROM WINDOWS

Windows machines in the EECS domain will typically map the user’s home directory to the H:\ drive when the user logs in. Alternatively, home directories can be accessed via the appropriate UNC path, depending on username, e.g. \\home30.eecs.berkeley.edu\user. see the File Storage FAQ page for specifics.

ACCESSING HOME DIRECTORIES FROM MAC OS X

We do not support AFP, but Mac OS X machines can use Samba (CIFS). If your OS X machine has a fixed IP address on our networks, NFS may also be an option.

DISK ALLOCATION & QUOTAS

For Full accounts, the first 20 gigabytes of storage in your home directory on homeaccount is included in your account fees. Additional charges are applied if that amount is exceeded.

By default, there is a 60GB quota on home directories. This is in place simply to prevent a runaway job from using up all available space on the fileserver. If you need additional space, just send mail to help@eecs and we will be happy to increase your quota to any amount within reason if your account sponsor approves.

First-year graduate students without an advisor have a Limited SIF which includes a reduced amount of storage, and a reduced quota of 10GB. This can be increased at the request of the department MSO.

HOME DIRECTORY BACKUPS

Home directories include regular snapshots and backups.

EECS Project Space

In addition to home directories, individuals or research groups can also purchase space on project.eecs.berkeley.edu, to be shared among collaborators. As with home directories, space on project can be exported to Unix and Windows machines as appropriate.