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layout: default
navsection: userguide
navmenu: Tutorials
title: "Storing and Retrieving data using Arvados Keep"
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h1. Storing and Retrieving data using Arvados Keep
This tutorial introduces you to the Arvados file storage system.
*This tutorial assumes that you are "logged into an Arvados VM instance":{{site.basedoc}}/user/getting_started/ssh-access.html#login, and have a "working environment.":{{site.basedoc}}/user/getting_started/check-environment.html*
The Arvados distributed file system is called *Keep*. Keep is a content-addressable file system. This means that files are managed using special unique identifiers derived from the _contents_ of the file, rather than human-assigned file names (specifically, the md5 hash). This has a number of advantages:
* Files can be stored and replicated across a cluster of servers without requiring a central name server.
* Systematic validation of data integrity by both server and client because the checksum is built into the identifier.
* Minimizes data duplication (two files with the same contents will result in the same identifier, and will not be stored twice.)
* Avoids data race conditions (an identifier always points to the same data.)
h1. Putting Data into Keep
We will start with downloading a freely available VCF file from the "Personal Genome Project (PGP)":http://www.personalgenomes.org subject "hu599905":https://my.personalgenomes.org/profile/hu599905 to a staging directory on the VM, and then add it to Keep.
In the following tutorials, replace you
with your user id.
First, log into the Arvados VM instance and set up the staging area:
notextile.
~$ mkdir /scratch/you
Next, download the file:
~$ cd /scratch/you
/scratch/you$ curl -o var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2 'https://warehouse.personalgenomes.org/warehouse/f815ec01d5d2f11cb12874ab2ed50daa+234+K@ant/var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2'
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 216M 100 216M 0 0 10.0M 0 0:00:21 0:00:21 --:--:-- 9361k
~$ scp MyData.vcf you@shell.arvados:/scratch/you/MyData.vcf
{% include 'notebox_end' %}
Now use @arv keep put@ to add your VCF data to Keep, then delete the local copy of the file:
/scratch/you$ arv keep put var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2
c1bad4b39ca5a924e481008009d94e32+210
/scratch/you$ rm var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2
/scratch/you$ mkdir tmp
/scratch/you$ echo "hello alice" > tmp/alice.txt
/scratch/you$ echo "hello bob" > tmp/bob.txt
/scratch/you$ echo "hello carol" > tmp/carol.txt
/scratch/you$ arv keep put tmp
0M / 0M 100.0%
887cd41e9c613463eab2f0d885c6dd96+83
/scratch/you$ arv keep get c1bad4b39ca5a924e481008009d94e32+210
. 204e43b8a1185621ca55a94839582e6f+67108864 b9677abbac956bd3e86b1deb28dfac03+67108864 fc15aff2a762b13f521baf042140acec+67108864 323d2a3ce20370c4ca1d3462a344f8fd+25885655 0:227212247:var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2
204e43b8a1185621ca55a94839582e6f+67108864
, b9677abbac956bd3e86b1deb28dfac03+67108864
, fc15aff2a762b13f521baf042140acec+67108864
, 323d2a3ce20370c4ca1d3462a344f8fd+25885655
.
Let's use @arv keep get@ to download the first datablock:
notextile. /scratch/you$ arv keep get 204e43b8a1185621ca55a94839582e6f+67108864 > block1
Let's look at the size and compute the md5 hash of @block1@:
/scratch/you$ ls -l block1
-rw-r--r-- 1 you group 67108864 Dec 9 20:14 block1
/scratch/you$ md5sum block1
204e43b8a1185621ca55a94839582e6f block1
204e43b8a1185621ca55a94839582e6f+67108864
of:
* the md5 hash @204e43b8a1185621ca55a94839582e6f@ which matches the md5 hash of @block1@
* a size hint @67108864@ which matches the size of @block1@
Next, let's use @arv keep get@ to download and reassemble @var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2@ using the following command:
/scratch/you$ arv keep get c1bad4b39ca5a924e481008009d94e32+210/var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2 .
This downloads the file @var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2@ described by collection @c1bad4b39ca5a924e481008009d94e32+210@ from Keep and places it into the local directory. Now that we have the file, we can compute the md5 hash of the complete file:
/scratch/you$ md5sum var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2
44b8ae3fde7a8a88d2f7ebd237625b4f var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2
/scratch/you$ arv keep ls c1bad4b39ca5a924e481008009d94e32+210
var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2
/scratch/you$ arv keep ls -s c1bad4b39ca5a924e481008009d94e32+210
221887 var-GS000016015-ASM.tsv.bz2