EUMETSAT is establishing a new set of data access services that will bring the full data catalog online. Some more information can be found here (in particular, see the part on the Data Store):
https://www.eumetsat.int/website/home/Data/DataDelivery/NewPilotDataServices/index.html
At the initial opening of EWC to users, these services were not yet fully tested, populated or widely-accessible. Even now the services are open, it will still take time to fully populate them.
As a workaround for this intermediate period, virtual machines on the EUMETSAT cloud are able to mount an NFS share holding selected datasets. This server will be maintained until it is no longer needed.
Option 1: Using EUMETSAT data services
To avoid duplication, the information on how to use the new data services can be found on the following links:
- General description of all the data services
- Direct link to the Data Store (catalogue and download service) documentation
- Direct link to the Data Tailor (format conversion service) documentation
In the future, it may become possible to directly access the object storage behind the Data Store for applications that need very high throughput (e.g. mass data processing). Please contact us if you have tried the existing possibilities and believe you need this capability.
Option 2: Mounting the EUMETSAT NFS data archive
Setting up your instance
For data access, you will need to provision your instance on the EUMETSAT cloud (or establish a VPN connection to the EUMETSAT cloud).
In order to mount the NFS drive, first, you need to create the Virtual Machine instances in the Morpheus UI. You can follow the Provision a new instance - web Knowledge Base Article to get started.
Mounting NFS Share
After logging in to the virtual machine that you want to access the EUMETSAT data, all you need is to do is mount the NFS drive that rests on 198.18.255.11 onto the directory where you want it. You will need sudo permissions or root access to accomplish the major steps here.
Verify access to the NFS server
You can see all exported file systems on the EUMETSAT NFS server without mounting it using the showmount command like in the example below:
karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ showmount --exports 198.18.255.11 Export list for 198.18.255.11: ... (lot of text, but should include) /ifs/data/EUMETSAT_DATA /ifs/data/EUMETCAST ...
If you receive an error (e.g. timeout), please refer to the troubleshooting section below.
Create the (empty) directory where you'll mount the NFS share
You can place this anywhere you wish; we have chosen /eumetsatdata in the example here
karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ sudo mkdir /eumetsatdata karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ sudo echo "run sudo mount -a" > /eumetsatdata/NFS_NOT_MOUNTED # put a placeholder file in the directory to make it clear what's (not) happened karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ sudo chmod a+rX,go-w /eumetsatdata # minimise write permissions to prevent mistakes if the mount isn't there
The last two commands add a little extra safety for the case that the directory is unexpectedly not mountedMount NFS drive to the mount point
This command will do a once-off mount. If it works, you may wish to make it permanent as described in step 4
karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ sudo mount 198.18.255.11:/ifs/data/EUMETSAT_DATA /eumetsatdata
If you receive an error (e.g. timeout), please refer to the troubleshooting section below.If step 3 worked, you can now navigate to the /eumetsatdata directory and list all the available data with the ls -lah command
[karatosun@myfirstvm ~]$ cd /eumetsatdata/ [karatosun@myfirstvm eumetsatdata]$ ls -lah total 192K drwxrwxrwx. 7 nobody nobody 124 May 26 13:00 . dr-xr-xr-x. 19 root root 260 Jul 6 13:00 .. drwxrwsr-x. 5 1002 1002 101 Nov 7 2018 eumetcast drwxr-xr-x. 3 nobody nobody 24 Apr 23 2018 mviri drwxr-xr-x. 4 nobody nobody 52 May 28 17:26 seviri
Note that the ownerships and permissions will generally be "nobody"Making the NFS mount permanent and persistent across reboots (optional)
Edit /etc/fstab file of the VM with your editor of choice
karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ sudo nano /etc/fstab
and add the following line
198.18.255.11:/ifs/data/EUMETSAT_DATA /eumetsatdata nfs defaults 0 0
A complete example of a /etc/fstab can be seen in the block below (do not copy all of this!)
To test the persistent configuration, unmount the share, then try to automatically remount it:
karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ sudo umount /eumetsatdata karatosun@myfirstvm ~$ sudo mount -a
If you see an error and the manual mount worked previously, please check for typos!
Troubleshooting
Timeout/network connectivity: test that you can ping the NFS server with ping 198.18.255.11 command. If not, you have a routing, firewalling or security group issue. Assuming a default setup, the most likely issue is a security group problem. Until we provide a knowledgebase article, please contact us.
Limitations
- Access to the archive is read-only. This is a technical limitation due to the way the NFS server is mapped into the VM's address space.
- Only a limited subset of EUMETSAT data is available. At the time of writing, this included Meteosat L1.5 data, a cloud type dataset and a few example files from EUMETCAST. Please contact us if you need something that is not currently there.