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Storage

Overview A number of different storage solutions are available to University faculty, their students, and their collaborators engaged in research computing on the Scientific Computing Facilities. These storage solutions are available for research and for educational use in courses related to computational science.
Available To Students, Faculty, Researchers, External Research Collaborators, Industrial Partners
Benefits
  • High-performance, high-availability storage is shared across all of the systems, thereby reducing the time and complexity of data access.
  • Clients bear no direct costs.
  • The Scientific Computing & Visualization group maintains the environment and has expertise in using and maintaining the storage systems.
Key Features
  • Access to an 84 Terabyte IBM System Storage DS4700 GPFS disk storage array for projects that need large quantities of disk space
  • Several tiers of online storage:
    • individual home directories (long-term, small size)
    • backed-up shared project space (moderate to long-term, moderate size)
    • non-backed-up shared project space (moderate-term, large size)
    • scratch (short-term, large size).
  • archival (near-line) storage to an IBM TotalStorage 3494 Tape Storage System with a maximal capacity of 935 Terabytes (current configuration provides 500 Terabytes)
Requirements
  • Must be a member of a Scientific Computing Facilities (SCF) research project
    • BU faculty and full-time research staff are allowed to create SCF research projects and serve as Principal Investigators.
    • Principal Investigators may add collaborators (students, researchers outside of BU, etc.) to their SCF research project.
Cost No charge to the BU community.
There is a charge to industrial partners.
Getting Started Learn more about file storage on the SCF.