CQUni Research Data Storage Options

CQUniversity Research Data Storage Options

Data Storage and data security are an important part of data management. When it comes to your Research Data there are CQUniversity policy’s as well as potential Federal Government Obligations, especially for federally funded grants such as ARC and NHMRC. There is also the issue of Data Sovereignty in the ever-growing world of cloud storage it is harder and harder to know what country your data may be stored in. Due to these reasons, we recommend and CQUniversity policy mandates that a master copy of all research data be stored on the dedicated local research data storage system accessible via Data Manager. A Research Data Management Plan is required to access CQUniversity’s Dedicated Local Research Data storage infrastructure. More information can be found on the ‘Research Data Management’ section of this website.

Depending on the type of data to be managed and preserved it may be kept for at least 5 years. In some cases, particularly health and medical data, research data may need to be stored for 25 years or even longer.

Depending on the use case, research requirements and needs, there are a number of research data storage options that are available. The following table provides help to determine with solution is best for you.

REQUIREMENTS	DEDICATED LOCAL RESEARCH DATA STORAGE SERVICE	HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING STORAGE (NOT SUITABLE FOR PERMANENT RESEARCH DATA STORAGE)	OneDrive
^*DATA STORAGE SUITABLE FOR ARCHIVING PURPOSES?	Mandatory	No	No
^**SUITABLE FOR WORKING WITH VERY LARGE DATASETS?	Yes	Yes	No
^***SUITABLE FOR USING ACTIVE DATA?	Yes	Yes	Yes
SUITABLE FOR USE WITH SENSITIVE DATA (EG, IDENTIFIABLE DATA, COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE, ETC)	Yes	Not Recommended	Not Recommended
SUITABLE FOR SHARING YOUR DATA WITH RESEARCHERS AT CQUNIVERSITY?	Preferred	Yes	Yes
SUITABLE FOR SHARING YOUR DATA WITH RESEARCHERS NOT AT CQUNIVERSITY?	Discuss with eResearch Team what options are best suited
ABLE TO BE REMOTELLY ACCESSED?	Yes (VPN required)	Yes (VPN required)	Yes
DO YOU REQUIRE STORAGE THAT IS PHYSICALLY CLOSE TO COMPUTING FACILITIES FOR PROCESSING PURPOSES?	No	Yes	No

Note

^*Archiving purposes is data that requires permanent storage and will be stored and remain unchanged

^**Large Data Set are considered to be more than 250GB’s of data

^***Active data is the term given to a data set that is currently being used and produced as part of ongoing research – for example, data that is frequently accessed, modified and/or being added to.

	ABOUT	BENEFITS	LIMITATIONS
DEDICATED LOCAL RESEARCH DATA STORAGE SERVICE	In early 2014, CQUniversity installed and commissioned our first dedicated research storage infrastructure providing significant storage capacity. Designed to store data which is actively being developed, as well as completed managed data collections (in particular, datasets that are confidential / non publishable). To gain access to this facility, you will need to fill out a Research Data Management Plan.	Data is stored at our local Campus, thus there are no data sovereignty issues. Provides access to significant amounts of storage capacity (e.g. 10 TB). Facilities are located behind our corporate firewalls, thus providing an extra layer of security. Only CQUni staff or affiliate accounts have access to the servers for increased security.	Difficult to provide access to data for external collaborators. Contact eResearch support team to discuss options
HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING STORAGE	The HPC System is not designed to permanently store files and data, but rather to provide access to significant capacity near computing resources, thus allowing heavy processing, simulation and data analysis of any data stored on the system. The files on the system are not backed up and should be moved to dedicated storage.	Provides significant storage near computing high performance computing facilities	Not designed for permanent storage, nor for any other user case, other than to be used in conjunction with the HPC system
OneDrive	OneDrive is a service provided by Microsoft and is attached to both your student account and your affiliate account allowing you to access data remotely across multiple machines. Even if data is stored on OneDrive a master copy needs to be stored on dedicated local research data storage.	Easy remote access to data and files. secured login via account MFA. Easy to provide access to external collaborators.	Not recommended for sensitive material due to lack of control over facilities. Limited storage size.

ABOUT

BENEFITS

LIMITATIONS

DEDICATED LOCAL RESEARCH DATA STORAGE SERVICE

In early 2014, CQUniversity installed and commissioned our first dedicated research storage infrastructure providing significant storage capacity. Designed to store data which is actively being developed, as well as completed managed data collections (in particular, datasets that are confidential / non publishable). To gain access to this facility, you will need to fill out a Research Data Management Plan.

Data is stored at our local Campus, thus there are no data sovereignty issues. Provides access to significant amounts of storage capacity (e.g. 10 TB). Facilities are located behind our corporate firewalls, thus providing an extra layer of security. Only CQUni staff or affiliate accounts have access to the servers for increased security.

Difficult to provide access to data for external collaborators. Contact eResearch support team to discuss options

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING STORAGE

The HPC System is not designed to permanently store files and data, but rather to provide access to significant capacity near computing resources, thus allowing heavy processing, simulation and data analysis of any data stored on the system. The files on the system are not backed up and should be moved to dedicated storage.

Provides significant storage near computing high performance computing facilities

Not designed for permanent storage, nor for any other user case, other than to be used in conjunction with the HPC system

OneDrive

OneDrive is a service provided by Microsoft and is attached to both your student account and your affiliate account allowing you to access data remotely across multiple machines.

Even if data is stored on OneDrive a master copy needs to be stored on dedicated local research data storage.

Easy remote access to data and files. secured login via account MFA. Easy to provide access to external collaborators.

Not recommended for sensitive material due to lack of control over facilities. Limited storage size.

Research data is precious, therefore here are a few tips to ensure the safety and security of any research data:

CQUniversity policy mandates that a master copy of all data be stored on the dedicated local research data storage.
The data on the dedicated local research data storage is stored across 2 data centers and backed up nightly providing increased data security
Storing data on services such as ‘Dropbox’ and other cloud services poses the risk of data be leaked or access by foreign governments due to the volatility of Data Sovereignty.
Some ‘free’ services have been known to block accounts, in which major issues have arisen with retrieving the data hosted on these services.

Storing your data on the CQUniversity Dedicated Research Data Storage Service is the easiest and most secure way to resolve issues with data security relating to backups and redundancy as well as Data Sovereignty.