SciStor
What is it?
The storage service SciStor is intended for cheaply storing large amounts of research data on campus.
SciStor is hosted by IT for Research (ITvO) on the VU campus enabling a high-speed connection to lab equipment, laptops and workstations, the ADA HPC cluster and SciCloud. It can also be accessed off-campus.
Your data is stored in a project folder with group-based access rights (read/write or read-only). Access rights can be set one level deep, so one folder could be used to host data from different subprojects.
Data is backed up daily with snapshots and replicated to a second location for disaster recovery, the documentation explains how.
What can it be used for?
Networked Drive
Because SciStor is connected to the VU on-campus network you can directly mount (map a network drive) SciStor project folders on your laptop and work as if the data is on a local disk.
Access off-campus
Although SciStor is most useful on campus you can also access your project folders off-campus via EduVPN institute access.
Lab instruments
In many cases lab equipment can write data directly to SciStor. IT for Research can help you setup an automated and secure connection.
Storage space for SciCloud servers
SciCloud virtual servers are provisioned with a 20 to 50GB local disk. A SciStor project folder can be directly mounted on the server to increase storage for your application or directly access your source data for analysis.
ADA
The ADA HPC cluster is connected to SciStor via a high speed network. You can run your analysis software directly on your data and easily access the results on your laptop.
Data life-cycle
SciStor is meant for data you are actively working with. We recommend archiving datasets that are no langer actively used, but can’t be deleted, in Yoda. This ensures SciStor is used optimally and costs are kept down for your research group and the VU.