Research Data Storage

What Is It?

There are many data storage services available across UIC. To find the storage most appropriate to your use case, ACER has created the UIC Data Storage Finder tool, which allows faculty, students, and staff to browse and compare all storage offerings in one convenient location. Listed below are some storage solutions optimized for several different researcher needs:

Features

There are several data storage services available to UIC faculty and staff that are optimized for specific research data needs: high-performance computing (HPC) storage, general research storage (Research Data Lake) for semi-frequently accessed data or light-archival purposes, and preservation storage (Research Data Glacier) for archiving completed research projects with rarely accessed data.

Research Data Lake Storage

The Research Data Lake is a safe, reliable, enterprise-grade system for storing and managing both structured and unstructured research data. The system is located on the UIC campus and is wholly owned and managed by ACER. It utilizes an implementation of the Amazon S3 object protocol that makes it ideally suited for data archiving, backing up of critical data, disaster recovery, big data analytics, and machine learning. In addition, the system is equipped with additional security controls and measures that allow it to store sensitive data such as HIPAA and FERPA.

Data on this system is accessed through the Globus file transfer system, which provides a browser interface or command-line interface to access data on the system or to transfer from personal devices (laptops, lab machines etc.) via Globus Personal Endpoint.

Research Data Glacier Storage

ACER has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the UIC Library to provide archival storage space to UIC faculty members whose research is supported through federally-funded grants. The storage is hosted on Amazon’s S3 Storage, providing low cost storage for data that needs to be archived for several years in order to meet the data retention and sharing requirements of NIH and other federal research grants. More information about this service can be found on the Research Data Glacier service offering page.

Research Data Rapids Storage

ACER’s central infrastructure includes a 3 Pb high performance GPFS storage system intended for active research projects. Project storage is available for research groups staging data needing HPC and analytics applications.

All researchers who have accounts on ACER's HPC infrastructure are provided 1TB of project storage space free of cost. Additional storage can be procured at a per-terabyte (TB) rate on monthly or yearly terms. Current pricing is $44/TB per year. To request please complete visit the Research Data Rapids service page.

 

Who Is Eligible To Use It?

UIC faculty and staff.

Where Can I Get It?

Select the appropriate button on this page to submit your request.

How Do I Use It?

Please see ACER's knowledge base articles for information on how to use the storage offerings. 

Research Data Lake

Research Data Glacier

How Much Does It Cost?

This service is Self-Funded

How Can I Get Support?

If you are experiencing a problem with this service, please report it. If you just have a question, feel free to ask us.

Service Levels

Service Request Fulfillment Time  
Incident Response Time  
Incident Resolution Time  
Service Availability  
Maintenance Window(s)  
Service Notification Channel(s)  
 
Request Data Rapids Storage Request Data Lake Storage Request Data Glacier Storage

Details

Service ID: 776
Created
Wed 4/12/23 2:08 PM
Modified
Wed 6/5/24 1:39 PM
Service Owner
This person is accountable for the overall performance of this service. This is not a support contact.
Service Review Date
Date of the most recent review of this service.
04/02/2024

Service Offerings (3)

Research Data Rapids
High-performance GPFS storage attached to ACER HPC Cluster.
Research Data Lake
General research storage for semi-frequently accessed data or light-archival purposes.
Research Data Glacier
Archival storage hosted on AWS for completed research projects with rarely accessed data.