Workstations

Workstations are installed and used in a client/server environment. User files (homedirectories) are stored on one of the central fileservers. Hence workstations do not contain user data and users do not depend on a single workstation, allowing for quicker and easier replacement in case of hardware malfunction.

Unused diskspace on workstations is allocated to the /scratch directory on UNIX systems (d: drive or c:\temp on Windows) which can be used locally on a workstation for staging and intermediate data storage.

Filesystems local to a workstation, including scratch directories are never backed up, so do not use /scratch, or the local disks on Windows systems for data that is expensive to rebuild. Contents of the scratch directory is not retained when the system is upgraded or reinstalled.

Dual boot systems (two installed operating systems) are not supported.