Swestore-iRODS

About Swestore

Swestore is National Research Data Storage Infrastructure operated by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC).

The resources provided by Swestore are made available through open procedures such that the best Swedish research is supported and new research is facilitated. The purpose of Swestore allocations, granted by Swedish National Allocations Committee (SNAC), is to provide large scale data storage for “live” or “working” research data, also known as active research data.

Due to the current funding model, allocations made available through open procedures and granted by SNAC are intended for "Managing of active data". This type of allocations on Swestore have some usage limitations unless specifically stated otherwise in separate contract:

• Swestore allocations are NOT supposed to be used for backups and such requests for allocation will be rejected. Please, check with your university (home institution/organisation) IT department about backup services, strategies and policies in place. If such services do not exist or if you can’t access them for different reasons, please contact us at support@swestore.se;
• Swestore is NOT supposed to be used as archiving service, long-term storage or repository for “static” data. Once data is no longer in the process of change, and decision on which data should be retained shared and/or preserved has been taken, data should be moved toward appropriate data services. The higher education institutions are responsible for archiving and long-term preservation of research data produced by researchers employed by them;

If you would like to purchase SNIC Storage services and/or Swestore storage allocation, please contact SNIC Office at office@snic.se

Apply for storage

All standard SNIC Swestore projects are managed using the SNIC User and Project Repository portal (SUPR). Please follow the instructions on the SNIC web site page to apply for storage.

Support and Help Desk

If you have any issues using Swestore, please do not hesitate to contact support@swestore.se.

SNIC Swestore provides also a Help Desk service. You can request assistance and Swestore operators will assist you directly.

Support and Help Desk services are available during the regular office hours of operation (i.e. 09-17), except when the SNIC partner centers are closed due to Holidays, Administrative Closing, or Inclement Weather. Support service may have better service hours as defined above. However, outside of service hours Swestore Support providers do not guarantee the presence of personnel able to handle service requests or able to solve incidents.

Swestore iRODS

Swestore iRODS is distributed across two SNIC centres NSC and PDC.

Data is stored in two copies with each copy at a different SNIC centre. This enables the system to cope with a multitude of issues ranging from a simple crash of a storage element to losing an entire site while still providing access to the stored data.

Using Swestore iRODS

Download and upload data

From the command line

There are several command line tools capable of using the protocols provided by Swestore iRODS. For interactive usage on SNIC clusters we recommend using the iCommands which should be installed on all SNIC resources. There are too many commands to document fully here.

• Please check full and updated documentation at iRODS official Documentation.
• The command line client may be downloaded from iRODS Download page.
• Configuration of the icommands requires a file called irods_environment.json to be placed in a subdirectory .irods/ of your home directory (e.g. ~/.irods/irods_environment.json).
• A template of this file is available: download irods_environment.json.

You must edit this with a text editor (not MS word, but notepad for Windows, textEdit for Mac or any Unix editor) and put your SNIC username in the place for <YOUR_SNIC_USER_NAME>.:

{
  "irods_host": "irods-login.swestore.se",
  "irods_port": 2432,
  "irods_default_resource": "SNICDisk",
  "irods_home": "/snic.se/home/<YOUR_SNIC_USER_NAME>",
  "irods_cwd": "/snic.se/home/<YOUR_SNIC_USER_NAME>",
  "irods_user_name": "<YOUR_SNIC_USER_NAME>",
  "irods_zone_name": "snic.se",
  "irods_client_server_negotiation": "request_server_negotiation",
  "irods_client_server_policy": "CS_NEG_REFUSE",
  "irods_encryption_key_size": 32,
  "irods_encryption_salt_size": 8,
  "irods_encryption_num_hash_rounds": 16,
  "irods_encryption_algorithm": "AES-256-CBC",
  "irods_default_hash_scheme": "SHA256",
  "irods_match_hash_policy": "compatible",
  "irods_authentication_scheme": "PAM"
}

From GUI client

Graphical User Interface (GUI) clients are known to work on some operating systems.

Cyberduck

Is a graphical client for Windows and OS X.

• Download and install Cyberduck from https://cyberduck.io.
• Download and open the Swestore iRODS cyberduck profile (right click and select 'save link as' to download). Then click on the profile, cyberduck should then open the connection as a cyberduck book mark.
• Edit the profile as below changing the path to /snic.se/home/<YOUR_SNIC_USER_NAME>
• Close the profile and double click on the bookmark in cyberduck - if the bookmark is not visible, then you can bring it up by going to the menu Bookmark->toggle bookmarks. This should bring up the login prompt. * Enter your SNIC username and password. A peculiarity of cyberduck with iRODS is that you must put the text PAM: before your username as is shown below.
• Once you have successfully authenticated you should get a view of your home directory.

Access using WebDAV (map a network drive)

WebDAV endpoint for Windows 10, Linux and OS X https://snic-irods-webdav.pdc.kth.se:8443/snic.se/

From a web browser

via Davrods

Swestore iRODS is accessible in your web browser as a simple directory index interface at https://snic-irods-webdav.pdc.kth.se:8443/snic.se/

To browse private data you need to authenticate with your username and password.

Projects are organized under the /projects directory as https://snic-irods-webdav.pdc.kth.se:8443/snic.se/projects/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME/.

Home can be accessed at https://snic-irods-webdav.pdc.kth.se:8443/snic.se/projects/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.

Public can be accessed at http://snic-irods-webdav.pdc.kth.se:8888/snic.se/home/public/.

EMC Metalnx

The EMC Metalnx is an administrative and metadata management user interface (UI) for iRODS. You can access it at https://irods-web.swestore.se