ResearchDrive adoption grows on campus with greater research data storage at lower cost

 

Mark Meyer, assistant professor of nutritional sciences and UW Carbone Cancer Center member, lists several essential data tools for his lab: electronic lab notebooks (eln.wisc.edu), OneDrive and SharePoint.

But most important, Meyer says, has been the ResearchDrive, a university-wide file storage solution for faculty PIs, permanent PIs, and their research group members. ResearchDrive is suited for a variety of research purposes, including data backup, archiving, storage for data inputs/outputs of research computing and others. It is a secure and permanent place for keeping data.

About 1,003 researchers and PIs currently use the ResearchDrive at UW–Madison.

“Securely storing data has become an increasingly important and burdensome responsibility for researchers, particularly as the size of their data sets grow,” says Steve Ackerman, vice chancellor for research and graduate education. “ResearchDrive is an essential service for our research community in areas ranging from managing survey data to machine learning and predictive modeling of disease spread, and it’s great to see so many researchers embracing the service.”

Having secure data storage is a key component of any data management plan, explains Lois Brooks, vice provost for information technology and chief information officer.

“With ResearchDrive we have a flexible data storage solution for research collaboration needs and ensuring research integrity,” she says. “ResearchDrive provides essential elements in the life cycle of managing research data, ranging from storage and preservation to sharing and compliance with regulations.”

 

Recently, ResearchDrive has been upgraded based on research needs. Beginning July 1, UW–Madison Information Technology increased the no cost storage allotment and lowered the paid rates for extra storage (for those exceeding their no cost allotment).

Thanks to campus investment, faculty and employees with permanent PI status now receive 25TB/PI no cost storage on ResearchDrive  (up from 5TB/PI) and reduced rates of $120/TB/year (down from $200/TB year) for additional storage.

Coming this summer, IT will add a faster flash storage layer to ResearchDrive to optimize performance. Later this fall, another storage tier, S3 Research Object Storage, useful for moving data from instruments, computing resources, and archiving less active data, will also become available.

“ResearchDrive has quickly become a core tool in my lab’s data storage and management,” Meyer says.  “I am a new faculty member in the Nutritional Sciences Department, and we study the intricate genomic and molecular mechanisms that regulate the biological changes controlling the intersection of metabolism, inflammation, and disease progression using unique animal models, genomic editing techniques, and -omics bioinformatic approaches to generate unbiased interrogation of chromatin changes. To do this, my lab utilizes techniques that involve large datasets from next-generation sequencing data, fluorescent and brightfield microscope images, and extensive bioinformatics. ResearchDrive has a connection to our computational server and provides the backend long-term storage.”

ResearchDrive is an important component of the research services ecosystem on campus and with the recent upgrades, we are responding to campus needs for greater data storage capacity,” says Jan Cheetham, director of research cyberinfrastructure for the Division of Information Technology.

”ResearchDrive is secure and affordable,” Cheetham says. “It also makes us more competitive when we are recruiting new faculty. We hear from new faculty that one of their top concerns is transferring and securing their data. With the ResearchDrive upgrades this summer, we are better able to meet their needs.”

Some of the ResearchDrive users on campus with the largest data sets are those in forest and wildlife ecology who do wildlife sensing and recording, explains Casey Schacher, research storage lead and member of the research cyberinfrastructure team.

“Those researchers helped make the case for additional storage capacity for ResearchDrive because of the strong need for large data sets in the field, such as those for tracking and recording birds,” Schacher says.

Prior to campus adding ResearchDrive, Meyer says his lab invested heavily in server storage and infrastructure. This infrastructure was extremely costly and a burden on the department IT staff.

“We’ve integrated ResearchDrive (and SharedDrive ) whenever possible.,” says Kerry Tobin, IT manager for the Department of Biochemistry. “Our department provides funding for additional ResearchDrive storage for each PI’s lab. This storage upgrade and pricing change will significantly reduce our storage costs as a department. We also have preconfigured Globus integration for each PI and are already using S3 storage for departmental data archives.”

“The addition of ResearchDrive has revolutionized every aspect for our group, providing the flexibility and redundancy we need in our data storage,” Meyer says. “An overlooked feature of ResearchDrive is the user serviceable “snapshots” where data can be recovered and rolled back, so it’s difficult to lose data. This is not easily accomplished through decentralized storage solutions like personal hard drives or a local departmental server.”

Permissions and sharing management for ResearchDrive allows fine control of which folders are visible, writeable, and shareable within his lab group, subgroups within his lab, and to collaborators on campus. This data management is further streamlined by Core facilities like the Biotechnology Center Sequencing Core using Research Drive for data delivery, allowing a seamless transfer of data into Meyer’s lab ResearchDrive.

“The increased storage allotment in ResearchDrive, in conjunction with additional options for S3 object storage, will allow us to divert funds to more experiments, decrease the burden on our lab and accelerate science. Research Drive truly is a vital piece of our research operation,” Meyer says.

Additionally, this summer campus will add a faster flash storage layer to ResearchDrive to optimize performance.

Rate changes for ResearchDrive (started July 1, 2023)

	Past rates	New rates
No cost storage	5TB/PI	25TB/PI
Additional storage	$200/TB/Year	$120/TB/Year

New for fall of 2023

In fall 2023*, campus will introduce Research Object Storage, based on a local S3 cluster, which is useful for data archiving, big data analysis, instrumentation data, static web content, data target for backup software, enterprise applications, IoT (Internet of Things) data storage, and more. Each PI will be eligible for 50TB no cost storage ($60/TB/year additional storage).

Information about the S3 protocol and the local Research Object Storage cluster will be coming out later as we get closer to fall.

Rate changes for Research Object Storage

	Current	Fall 2023
No cost storage	0TB	50TB
Additional storage	$150/TB/Year	$60/TB/Year

Your local IT support will be an important resource as you begin using ResearchDrive to help you take advantage of it. We encourage you to work with your local IT support, but if needed you can also sign up at ResearchDrive – getting started.

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