Application Storage: Store Files for Department Level Applications

Application Storage is generally used by departmental system administrators or database administrators who need to run a large, highly available application. Use case examples might include parts of an install application on a server that needs more storage than the server has capacity for or storage for the supporting application ecosystem. 

In this article:

• Requesting a share
• Moving files into Application Storage 
• File limitations
• Additional Information

Requesting a share

1. Prepare what's needed for the storage request form.
   1. Ensure your department has been on-boarded to Customer Experience Standardization for Infrastructure (CESI) as a storage consumer. 
      • See the Customer Unit Map spreadsheet for a list of current storage consumer departments.
   2. Ensure that you have the ability to access a share over the NFS protocol or SMB. 
   3. Determine where in your process or workflow you can take advantage of an enterprise-like storage offering. 
   4. Implement a workflow to copy data off of Application Storage when the task is complete (to SBS, Research Data Storage, etc.).
   5. Estimate the amount of space your data will likely consume. 
   6. Identify systems that will need access to the export or share. 
2. Fill out the storage request form.

Note: Once you have submitted the form, a share will be configured for you. Approval typically takes 2 business days. Once you gain access to a share, you will get a notification when your share is ready. 

Moving files into Application Storage

Important: Command line utilities like Rsync and Robocopy are examples of processes available for copying data to your share. With any command line utility, there is some risk of data loss. Make sure you understand the syntax to use these tools, so you don't inadvertently overwrite existing data.

1. SMB (Windows)
   • Robocopy to Large Scale Storage
2. NFS (Linux)
   • Move or Copy Data with Rsync

File Limitations

Very large numbers of very small files (e.g. 100 million files consuming <1 TB of storage) may produce an error. If you have over 10 million files in your data directories, plan to have a storage consultation with a storage champion to determine the best plan for your data.

Additional Information

Application Storage is one of seven new storage service offerings for the University community rolling out in 2020. For more information about the storage services provided by the Office of Information Technology, see the Storage Portfolio Restructuring Initiative.