Storage

Universal Scale Storage (SDSC Qumulo)

SDSC offers large-scale high-performance storage cluster to campus users, members of the UC community, and UC affiliates. Universal Scale Storage, also known as SDSC Qumulo, is often combined with the compute services at SDSC because of its ease of mounting and high connection speed, making it the preferred storage choice of many researchers who work with Big Data.

SDSC Qumulo provides a secure storage platform offering transparent data protection. File system permissions and secure authentication establish a familiar set of access controls to enable multiuser collaboration while restricting unauthorized access. If a user account or client system is compromised, the data stored on SDSC Qumulo will remain protected by an automated snapshot policy that schedules daily snapshots and maintains the last 30 as read-only copies of the entire dataset. Extreme scenarios involving ransomware can be quickly resolved by restoring the last snapshot. Security extends to the underlying hardware, which is physically monitored 24/7 and protected with two factor authentication at the SDSC datacenter.

Backups Storage (CommVault)

The SDSC Research Data Services team offers CommVault, which is a highly customizable backup system, to UC San Diego campus users, members of the UC community, and UC affiliates.

While CommVault truly shines as the backup solution for a group of several workstations, making it an ideal backup choice for collaborative research labs, CommVault also thrives in an enterprise backup role. Other advantages include:

• Low maintenance – after a quick installation process, the CommVault service successfully backs up data, requiring little to no user attention
• Highly customizable – collaborate with the SDSC Research Data Services team to determine backup frequency, retention, and directories in order to balance cost and recovery capabilities
• Pay on use – rather than assessing costs based on licenses for each workstation, with no leniency for users with small amounts of data, SDSC CommVault users pay only based on the amount of data that is backed up.

CommVault Rates

CommVault costs are applied in two stages: at a premium to the data stored on user systems and at a reduced rate to the data stored as backups in SDSC storage facilities.

Example: 1 TB of data that needs to be backed up with 1 copy of the data saved in SDSC storage systems for a UC user would cost $91.67/month + $35.17/month for a total of $126.84/month.

Please contact the Research Data Services team for a custom quote based on the amount of data that needs to be backed up, the number of backups that need to be retained, and the retention period.

Cloud Storage

SDSC Cloud Storage is the perfect storage choice for researchers with fixed budgets because unlike other cloud providers, SDSC features a simplified recharge plan that eliminates secondary fees such as bandwidth costs, charges assessed per request, and regional migration fees. 

In addition to storage, SDSC Cloud includes compute options. See SDSC Cloud Storage & Compute for details and rates.

Project Storage (Network File System)

SDSC offers Network File System (NFS) storage to campus users, members of the UC community, and UC affiliates. Project Storage is often combined with the compute services at SDSC because of its ease of mounting and high connection speed, making it the preferred storage choice of many researchers who work with Big Data.

There are two types of Project Storage:

Hotel: Reserve space on one of several open storage nodes. Monthly fees are assessed by the amount of allocated storage.

Condo: Invest in the Project Storage hardware and place it in the SDSC datacenter. The SDSC storage team provides hardware recommendations, setup, and continual maintenance. Monthly fees cover maintenance and datacenter use. Overall, condo requires more funding up front but results in significantly lower total cost over the course of its five-year lifespan.

Virtualization Hosting (VMWare)

SDSC offers virtual machines (VMs) to campus users, members of the UC community, and UC affiliates. By using this professionally curated VMware environment, users avoid the hassle of acquiring and maintaining physical servers while enjoying all the benefits of owning them.

Advantages include:

• Resiliency - virtual servers are built to withstand normal backend hardware exhaustion by shifting resources on the fly
• System administration - acquiring a VM from SDSC effectively gives you both the server and the support team that updates and protects it.
• Hostnames - SDSC RDS handles *.ucsd.edu and *.sdsc.edu hostname registrations for qualified users at no extra cost.

Users who need to meet compliance regulations such as HIPAA, FISMA, or CUI should contact Sherlock Secure Cloud.

Additional Consulting Services

Users may contact the SDSC RDS team for additional administration services to cover software issues, unmanaged server one-time consulting, etc. Additional charges may apply based on effort.

Snapshot Retention Period

Users may contact the SDSC RDS team to change their default snapshot retention periods. Additional charges may apply, based on monitoring effort and amount of storage consumed. Storage consumed is billed using the VM - Storage rate. Effort is billed using the Server Administration Consulting rate.