vulcan

General

• vulcan.pharmacology.dal.ca
• 40 cores (80 threads)
• 1.5TB RAM
• Storage
  • 33TB @ /home
  • 1.7TB @ /scratch (SSD for temporary storage of files for fast read/writing).
  • 161TB @ /bigpool (additional storage added Jan 2023).
• Ubuntu Server 20.04

Hardware

• SuperMicro SYS-8048B-TR4FT (Sold by Aspen Systems Inc)
• Installed Aug. 2017 (ITS ticket: 157630)

Location

• Killam B269
• Rack BL23

Storage & RAID

• Storage is configured using ZFS.

• /home is configured as raidz2 meaning it can handle 2 disk failures

• /scratch is configured as simply two drives pooled together (no data redundancy)

• Health of zfs can be done using zpool commands

• sudo zpool status

• Both pools are "scrubbed" once a month via a cron job

• /bigpool is configured with 12 20TB Exos 20 drives. This pool was created on Jan 24th 2023. It is a raidz2 array.

• One of the 12 drives on bigpool failed and was replaced on April 14th, 2025. In addition, another 20TB drive was added to the array as a "hot spare" for both bigpool and home. This can be used as a backup for these pools (although reduced usage on home since those drives are smaller. ).

  -To create a new directory for a user on bigpool:

  sudo mkdir USER

  sudo chown -R USER USER

  sudo chown -R :USER USER

• All drive slots are full now (last spot was used for hot spare).

Fixing DNS

• Vulcan sometimes has issues with DNS servers. Currently, Vulcan points to Dalhousie's DNS servers (others are likely blocked). Sometimes the DNS server names are reset and need to be manually changed back. That can be done by editing this file (using sudo):

  • /etc/resolv.conf

• If this file is changed (either through updating the server to a new OS etc.) please update the file to have the following two lines:

    nameserver 129.173.1.100
    nameserver 129.173.5.100