The Mobydisk storage system in the Center for Research Computing will be retired as of July 12 and replaced with a new file system. All data on Mobydisk must be migrated to the new file system. Each group should submit a help ticket here,  listing the locations of your data (for example /mnt/mobydisk/groupshares/XXXX).

CRC will coordinate the process of moving the data, but if you do not submit a help ticket, there is the potential that your data on Mobydisk will be lost. Mobydisk will be replaced by CRC’s new BeeGFS file system, which has a 1.6 PB capacity.  All data on Mobydisk must be migrated to the BeeGFS filesystem.

For each ticket, we will contact individually every primary investigator with data on Mobydisk. Expect emails from us if you have more than 5 TB on Mobydisk.

With the new file system, our data storage policy is as follows:

• CRC will allocate 5 TB of space to each PI free of charge.

• Data from Mobydisk PIs with up to 5 TB will be on BeeGFS.

• Any storage requirements above 5 TB will incur a fee of $45/TB/year on ZFS or $65/TB/year on BeeGFS.

CRC plans to finish migrating data by June 28. On July 12, Mobydisk will be fully decommissioned. Any data still stored on Mobydisk will be lost and unrecoverable.

Blackboard archiving

CourseWeb/Blackboard classes taught in fall 2016, and spring and summer 2017 (Terms 2171, 2174 and 2177) will be archived on May 10 by LMS Support and Consulting.

The course sections will be relocated and archived to a backup server to free up space in the Pitt learning management system. This will improve overall system performance, such us page loading speeds.

What do I need To know?

• Only courses taught between fall 2016 and summer 2017 will be archived.

• You may request that your course be exempted from this process by completing the Archive Exception Request form.

• Courses taught starting in fall 2017 through the upcoming summer 2019 term will remain actively available.

• Archived courses are retrievable by email request to lms@teaching.pitt.edu.

• You can retain an additional copy of your course through exporting. Find directions for exporting and then importing it into a future course on the Exporting and Importing a Course page.

• Please note that these exported packages are only compatible with Blackboard. While the content will all be contained in the exported package, you will not be able to access the content directly on your computer.

You can find information about CourseWeb/Blackboard course retention at the CourseWeb Retention Guidelines page.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact LMS Support and Consulting at LMS@teaching.pitt.edu or 412-648-2832.