Research Storage

Service Description

Provides ASC-managed on-site network storage intended for research data.

Eligibility

Available to all ASCTech-supported researchers in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Standard Availability:

Expected availability is 24/7 from on- or off-campus. As a network service, availability may be impacted by campus network performance, and ASC's monthly maintenance, which happens at night.

Requests for this service and support for using it are fulfilled during normal business hours.

What Is Included

  • Network storage with automatic backup.
    • Enterprise-grade storage hardware and management software with next-business-day warranty and on-demand access to vendor support.
    • Primary storage is housed in the State of Ohio Computer Center on West Campus. This avoids data destruction or loss by lab floods, theft, etc.
    • 7 days of snapshots are available locally for unassisted restore by users. This allows retrieval of a previous version of a file and mitigates accidental deletions.
    • 30 days of snapshots are housed at Wright State in Dayton; ASC IRIS operations staff can restore this data on request. This avoids data destruction by campus-area events (weather disasters, etc.).
  • Access as either SMB (for Windows and Mac computers) or NFS (primarily Linux workstations and Unity).
    • Can set up quotas on subdirectories (for users, projects, etc.).
    • Can be used with data transfer services such as Globus and rclone.
  • Approved for all OSU data classifications (S1 through S4), with some limitations.

    • Data classification

      Limitations

      S1 (Public)

      Data cannot be publicly shared from this storage.

      S2 (Internal)

      None

      S3 (Private)

      None

      S4 (Restricted)

      The more highly restricted data types (HIPAA, PCI, CUI, and Export Controlled) are not permitted. Requires special configuration.
  • While many features of this service (such as automatic snapshots, location in a secure data center, professional management, and backup to a remote location) make it a good foundation for a highly available, highly resilient storage system, research teams are responsible for employing good data management practices.
    • ASC IRIS can help with such planning, as can the University’s Research Data Management librarian.
    • As a network service, availability may be impacted by campus network performance. This should be considered if, for example, acquiring data directly to this storage or designing processes that depend on the service’s availability.
    • Any data management plan should be in agreement with the University Research Data policy.

Cost

  • The cost for this network storage for research data is $100/TB for a five-year lease.
  • The first 1 TB for a PI (single research group) is free for the first five-year period.
  • Billing is handled through the respective (ASC IRIS and department) fiscal officers.
  • At the end of the five-year lease, the service must be renewed at the then-current rate or data will be provided in off-line form and purged from the storage system.
  • As a service, if paid with grant funds, this may be considered to be an indirect cost.
  • The service may be available for non-research purposes (for example, instructional or administrative). However, we have heavily subsidized the cost for research purposes, and the subsidy does not apply to non-research applications. In that case, your cost $100/TB/year, which is about our actual cost of hardware (excluding personnel and facility costs).
  • The research-subsidized cost is competitive with stand-alone NAS devices and includes snapshots, device and user management, power, cooling, hardware and software updates, and a secure physical location.​​

How to Get It

Use the "Request Service" button.