ENGNAS Buy Back Policy

Engineering IT’s Netapp Network File Storage environment is a 1.5PB storage array that supports a wide array of services for the College of Engineering, such as Administrative, Course, and Research based data.

The Netapp provides a secure, centrally-managed, storage environment.  The service is protected via periodic snapshot on-site and replication based backup stored in a secondary datacenter located in Holyoke, Ma.  Using this service relieves departmental and lab administrators the responsibility, labor, and expense to physically administer and maintain a network file storage service.

The Netapp is stored in the University’s secure, environmentally managed, and highly available datacenter and is monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via automated monitoring tools where Engineering IT staff is notified of any service issues.

In a way to recover costs on some of the large research storage shares, in cooperation with the Dean’s Office and Grants Administration, we charge $20 per TB per year of storage for research shares over 20 Terabytes. *Areas with 20+TB prior to May 1, 2025 will not be charged retroactively.

Comparable services provided by Boston University IS&T cost $35 per Terabyte per year.

To provide the same service in the Amazon Web Service cloud as Engineering IT provides would cost $0.54 per Gigabyte per year plus the cost of a file server and would put the responsibility of data management and support on the department or lab.

In summary, the cost of hosting 150 Terabytes per year would be:

– Engineering IT’s Netapp: 20+TB

• 150TB  (-20TB) * $35/TB = $4,550 p/year

– Amazon Web Services

• $0.023/GB per month for up to 50 TB * 12 Months = 50TB @ $13,800 p/year
• $0.022/GB per month for 51 – 450 TB * 12 Months = 150TB @ $39,600 p/year
• $0.021/GB per month for above 500 TB * 12 Months = 500TB @ $126,000 p/year

– IS&T General Purpose NAS: $50 per TB per year:

• 150TB * $50/TB = $7,500 p/year