TACC's High Performance Computing (HPC) systems are used primarily for scientific computing and while their disk systems are large, they are unable to store the long-term final data generated on these systems. The Ranch archive system fills this need for high capacity long-term storage, by providing a massive high performance file system and tape-based backing store designed, implemented, and supported specifically for archival purposes.
Ranch is a Quantum StorNext-based system, with a DDN- provided front-end disk system (30PB raw), and a 5000 slot Quantum Scalar i6000 library for its back-end tape archive.
Ranch is an allocated resource, meaning that Ranch is available only to users with an allocation on one of TACC's computational resources such as Frontera, Stampede3, or Lonestar6. ACCESS PIs will be prompted automatically for the companion storage allocation as part of the proposal submission process and should include a justification of the storage needs in their proposal. The default allocation on Ranch for users is 2TB. To request a shared Ranch project space for your team's use, please submit a TACC Helpdesk ticket.