Detailed Information on Central File Service

ZIH provides all members of TU with central disc space. That includes the central home file service (home directory or home drive), where individual space is reserved for all registered users. Further areas can be provided as group drives for individual people or task forces.

Home Directories (Home Drive):

Home Directories (Home Drive):Home Directories (Home Drive):

This file service provides individual capacities for personal data (home directory) as well as personal www-pages for all members of TU.

Access via "https://wwwpub.zih.tu-dresden.de/~loginname"

You can change and save personal data in this space which is inaccessible to third parties ( except in designated parts of the separate WWW-area). The data will be saved automatically into the central backup system. To use the home directory, you need to activate the ZIH login by changing your initial password. You can obtain more advice and information on the ZIH login from the ZIH service desk.

A home drive possesses an initial size of 20 GB. The quotas will be raised in accordance with the state of the technology available. Required additional space can be registered with the service desk. Employees of TU Dresden can request a maximum of 200 GB (students 50GB). Even greater needs will require an additional group drive.

Group Drives

Group DrivesGroup Drives

Taskforces or individuals of TU Dresden with increased data space requirements can apply for group drives for projects or as a shared storage space. These group drives will be provided as network drives, just like home drives, for Windows, Apple Max and Linux via Samba/CIFS or rather NFS.

Without additional security measures by the client, they comply with security requirement “normal“ according to this circulation, enclosure 2 security requirement levels.

All group drives are saved automatically to central backup. For technical reasons, the support of ZIH storage team is still required to restore data from backup. Regular snapshots of the data are being taken and made available for access on demand for up to 26 weeks.

You can also apply for group drives with the Self-Service Portal of ZIH. Please also send your application to the ZIH service desk as an attachment via email.

You will usually be applying for the following:

A group drive of a capacity present by ZIH
Automatic increase up to the capacity applied for
A new admin login for the drive, needed only for the administration of NTFS-access rights. It will remain inactive in case of UNIX-rights (responsible contact person will be the applicant)
A new user group as the owners of the drive and all the data it contains (responsible contact person will be the applicant)
Functional logins can be applied for with IDM, if you wish to grant access to users who are not members of TU Dresden
User management can be taken over from the client system on NFS export
If group drives are expected to work in HRSK systems, the user management needs to be adjusted to the IDM of TUD (same user IDs and usernames).
Individual access management with NTFS rights can be arranged and should be indicated on the application form. An administration login will be generated for every group drive, to perform admin tasks on the access rights on a terminal server provided by ZIH.
The recommended starting capacity of group drives is 200GB. Bigger drives can be established within our available capacities. The maximum capacity permitted is, currently, 100TB. Please allow for some reserve space and estimate your data growth over the next three years. Unnecessary placeholders may be diminished or deleted.
ZIH and the applicants ensure that a contact person is always available on both sides. ZIH has to be notified of a change in contact person in due time.

Snapshots

SnapshotsSnapshots

Users can access the snapshots of the home directories and group drives we take on a regular basis. To do so, access “earlier versions“ in Windows, the sub-directories “.snapshot“ in Linux or the snapshot directories “~snapshot“ in Mac OS X which can be found in every directory.

Old snapshors cannot be overwritten and thus serve as protection against accidental or deliberate (viruses, trojans) manipulation of the data. A disruptive programme (malware, and other destructive bugs) may be destroying the current original file, but has no access to the snapshots.

Snapshots are usually available for up to 6 months.

Data Security/ Data Back-up/ Encryption

Data Security/ Data Back-up/ EncryptionData Security/ Data Back-up/ Encryption

The generation of snapshots is a pre-setting
Changing the snapshot settings is not possible for individual home directories or rather group drives, which are filed in collective containers.
All of the data mentioned here is part of the back up programme of ZIH. The assistance of a ZIH admin is required for restoration.
Independent backups of home directories or group drives are considered undesirable, since there is a central backup service. Regular backups are usually made of data that are subject to frequent changes, which results in up to 260GB of data per 100GB per annum.
Connections via SSH (scp, sftp) are encrypted
CIFS- connections are currently not encrypted
The data on the file servers are not encrypted unless encryption programmes have been specifically integrated.

SVM: Virtual File Server for Task Forces and Individual Administration

SVM: Virtual File Server for Task Forces and Individual AdministrationSVM: Virtual File Server for Task Forces and Individual Administration

Task forces with individual user management, e.g. a personal Windows- subdomain, can apply for virtual file servers (SVM) with included group drives. These will be integrated into their personal domain and have to be registered for backup service by their administrators.

Data Gateways

Data GatewaysData Gateways

Data gateways can be used for file transfer to, from or between central drives. All central drives such as home directories, HRSK-directories (incl. Scratch drives) and all group drives administered by ZIH can be found there. They can be found under different pathways according to their function groups:

home directories
- /home/<loginname>
group drives
- /glw/GLW-Name

HRSK directories
- /hpc/home/<loginname>
- /hpc/projects/<projectname>
- /hpc/scratch2/<loginname>
- /hpc/scratch2/<projectname>
- /hpc/ssd/<loginname>
- /hpc/ssd/<projectname>

archive
- archiv/<loginname>
- /archiv/<projectname>
- /archiv/<glw-name>

Access to Home and Group Drives

Access to Home and Group DrivesAccess to Home and Group Drives

- Anonymous FTP/data exchange without user administration according to IDM is not supported

- Home- or group drives are only accessible from the UP networks of TU Dresden. To access the drives on the go, use a VPN-Client to connect with the TU network.

- Copying data between home-, group- and HPC-drives (from April 2017 onwards)

Data gateways are being provided for all data exchange between all drives of this kind (dgw.zih.tu-dresden.de). Data can be exchanged between personal work stations and these drives via “sftp“ or “rsync“. A direct data exchange between these drives is possible on demand. (Syntax s. FAQ Access)

Invalid Characters in File or Directory Names

Invalid Characters in File or Directory NamesInvalid Characters in File or Directory Names

Please note that the following characters are invalid in directory or file names, since they can be subject to unwanted name changes when accessing them from Windows, Linux or MacOS:

~ " # % & * : < > ? / \ { | } .

In case of an error, Windows will display names such as ABCDEF~G.DAT which cannot be traced back to their original name.

Access Possibilities to a Network Drive

Access Possibilities to a Network DriveAccess Possibilities to a Network Drive

Always with ZIH login name and the corresponding password

Connection via SMB/CIFS with Windows-PCs (s. FAQ "Access")
Connection via SMB/CIFS or Mount with Mac (s. FAQ "Access")
Connection via SMB/CIFS or Mount with Linux systems (s. FAQ "Access")
Login to a login server with appropriate terminal programme (ssh in Linux or Mac, or e.g. "putty" in Windows).
- ssh login.zih.tu-dresden.de (or direct "login1" or "login2")

File transfer from/to/on a login server fo home drives
- sftp or scp to login.zih.tu-dresden.de

File transfer from/to/on a data gateway for all drives
- sftp, scp or rsync with dgw.zih.tu-dresden.de
- the server "dgw" substitutes the old "sftpg"-server

File transfer to/from HPC systems
- group drives and central home drives will not be exported directly to the HPC systems. Data required for change/use can be copied to or from HPC file systems via the HPC export junction or the data gateways.

FAQ

FAQFAQFAQ

-General questions and answers concerning group drives

-Questions and answers concerning the administration of access rights to group drives

-Questions and answers concerning access to group drives (Win, Linux, Mac) – (Connect network drive, CIFS/SMB, mount, sshfs, sftp, rsync)