Acacia - Quick Start

Owned by Sean Fleming
Last updated: Oct 05, 2023
3 min read

Acacia is Pawsey's warm-tier research data storage server. It is a part of the Pawsey storage portfolio and can be accessed on the Pawsey servers as well as from anywhere on the internet. Acacia's internet address or endpoint is https://projects.pawsey.org.au.

Use Case

Pawsey's supercomputer Setonix and its scratch and software file systems do not provide permanent storage space for research data. The data that needs to be stored for longer than a few weeks should be copied to the Acacia object storage service. Acacia provides a platform that you can use to store your data as long as your Pawsey project is active. In addition to storing research data for use within Pawsey, Acacia can be used for sharing data with researchers all over the world.

Accounts

There are two types of accounts available on Acacia, user and project. User accounts are accessible only by the user themselves whereas project accounts are shared between all project members. User accounts are created for all Pawsey account holders and come with a 100GB allocation. Project accounts are provided for all active Pawsey supercomputing, Nimbus research cloud and Visualisation projects, and they come with a 1TB allocation. For more information including how to apply for an increase in allocations see Data Documentation.

Access

Access to Acacia is via client software that takes care of moving data to and from Acacia and managing data objects. It can be accessed from Pawsey clusters or from your local/institutional computer.  

However, all S3 clients use a different login mechanism to your regular Pawsey username and password. Consequently, S3 specific credentials must be created before you can access acacia.

To begin, visit https://portal.pawsey.org.au and log in using your Pawsey username and password. Select the Acacia tab from the top menu and either select MANAGE KEYS or View Keys as highlighted below. 


This will take you to a page showing how many access keys you have created and the access ID's for these keys (which have been deliberately masked out in the image below).

Selecting the Storage Name drop down button will allow you to select either your user account or any project accounts you are a member of. Any keys you create for these accounts are separate and not interchangeable.

To create an access key, choose Create New Key. The access key will be generated and displayed so you can record it. NB this is your only opportunity to view your secret key. After you've saved your secret key in a secure location, chose Close. If you already have five access keys, the Create New Key button is disabled and you must delete an access key before you can create a new one. 

Secure your keys

  • The secret key is visible in Origin only when you create it. If you don't copy your secret access key or if you lose it, you must create a new set of access keys.
  • Anyone who has your access keys has the same level of access to your Acacia resources that you do. Consequently, you should go to significant lengths to protect your access keys. 


For more information on Origin see Project Management.