IT Services

ITS provide facilities for the storage of large volumes of data required for research projects that cannot be stored within the standard 10Gb home file system allocation.

This storage is a mix of:

1. Non-mirrored storage on disk - a single copy held on a RAID device in one location.
2. Mirrored storage on disk, for data that has to be available at all times; held on RAID devices in two separate locations (e.g. in the Shawcross and Pevensey Datacentres).
3. High performance parallel file system - attached to the HPC cluster and used during computation or for storing very large data sets that can be recreated or downloaded. (LUSTRE). Not backed up.

Networked Research Volumes (R-Drive) use the storage in (i) or (ii) and can be mapped onto your Desktop computer. Secure access is mediated by Access Control Lists held within Active Directory Groups and if desired the data can be shared within groups. The file servers have a high bandwidth connection to the central High Performance Computing Facilities.

Approximate Data Storage Costs (as at March 2012):

• Non-mirrored (standard) disk storage is £859 per Terabyte
• Nightly incremental tape backup for a five year period is approximately £600
• Mirrored storage (typically used for critical data) is £4615 per Terabyte
• Scratch LUSTRE storage ~ £7k for 18TB (NOT backed up)

The above costs are normally charged as a “one off up front” payment.

How to apply for data storage

The Principle Investigator will need to detail:

• amount of storage required
• whether the data has to be mirrored
• periods between backups
• when and if the data should be archived

giving a brief description of why they need to use the storage facility, why the data should be stored and for how long. Requirements for any encryption and levels of security will also be requested. Each applicant will be given the notional cost of the storage that they are applying for.

Applications for research storage should be addressed to researchsupport@its.sussex.ac.uk