Cloud Storage Service for Research

UITS Research Technologies is excited to announce a new cloud-based research data storage service that supports researchers who need long-term data storage, now that Google no longer will provide universities with free and unlimited storage on Google Drive. Currently called Tier 2 Storage, the new service automatically archives data into Amazon’s Glacier service or Deep Glacier service. Research Technologies is now working to move their data by the end of March 2023.

While UITS does have a very fast primary storage array for HPC (Tier 1), the logistics of using it for storage over the long term is both expensive and unreasonable. It made sense, then, to leverage their relationship with AWS to adopt a manageable storage solution. Unlike Tier 1, Tier 2 is intended for data not immediately undergoing active analyses. 

After working with a team of researchers to pilot the service, Tier 2 was opened to the University research community at the end of April 2022. Since then, about 9TB of data has been moved from Google Drive or HPC storage using Globus. Throughout the summer, Research Technologies will be identifying larger users of Google Drive to begin their transition.