Purdue University

ITaP Research Computing (RCAC) staff will hold a luncheon for faculty Tuesday, Sept. 16, to talk about the new Research Data Depot storage service, available now to any Purdue researcher who wants to safely store, work with and share research data sets.

The meeting from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Lawson Computer Science Building, Room 1142, also will touch on Purdue’s next Community Cluster Program research supercomputer. Lunch will be served.

Researchers and campus units can purchase initial space or expand their existing space in the Research Data Depot through the “Purchase” link atop the ITaP Research Computing (RCAC) website, https://www.rcac.purdue.edu says Preston Smith, ITaP’s manager of research support.

The Research Data Depot makes available over 2 petabytes of storage to Purdue faculty and campus units in need of a high-capacity central solution for storing large, active research data sets at a competitive price.

In addition, the Research Data Depot incorporates Globus for sharing access to and moving data among research collaborators not only around campus but also around the country and planet. Research Data Depot space is easily configurable by faculty for use on a project or research group basis and in on-campus and off-campus collaborations.

All data is protected from accidental deletion and mirrored at two sites on different ends of campus to ensure rapid access, reliability and recoverability to an extent not possible with research data storage resources maintained by individuals, labs or other campus units.

The luncheon also will be an opportunity for faculty to begin providing input on Purdue’s next Community Cluster Program supercomputer. ITaP plans to build a new cluster for Purdue researchers in 2015, the seventh since 2008, says Donna Cumberland, executive director of ITaP Research Computing (RCAC).

Through community clustering, ITaP is able to make more computing power available for Purdue research projects than faculty and campus units could afford individually. Vendors have provided significant price breaks on the large orders the clusters represent.

ITaP Research Computing (RCAC) installs, administers and maintains the community cluster systems, including security, software installation and user support, so researchers can concentrate on doing research rather than on running a high-performance computing system.

Community clustering also maximizes use by sharing computing power researchers use only part of the time with their peers, who can make use of it during what might otherwise be idle time. Researchers always have ready access to the capacity they purchase, and potentially to a lot more if they need it.