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We will be migrating the data held on the Research Data Storage Service (RDSS) to new hardware between soon, during which time access may be disrupted.
The Research Data Storage Service is currently hosted on UCL-owned hardware across two sites in Slough, with a back-up copy held in a third location. We use fast, reliable IBM Spectrum Scale storage which enables parallel read/write, petabyte-scale data volumes, and a high level of resilience.
In order to ensure the physical hardware that underpins the RDSS remains of the highest quality, we need to migrate your data to fresh hardware every 5-6 years.
In order to minimize disruption to the services whilst we move your data, we will spread the migration across a number of weekends during Spring/Summer 2024. Most projects will be migrated in their entirety during a single weekend. We will let you know when we will be migrating your project(s) and when they are available again once migration is complete.
While based on the same underlying technology as the previous hardware, our new storage system will be part of a tiered infrastructure – much more closely integrated with UCL’s High-Performance Computing facilities, enabling data to be processed faster. The new infrastructure also includes a tape archive enabling far more cost-effective long-term data preservation than has previously been the case.
One consequence of the migration will be that the URL you have previously used to connect to your project storage will need to be updated. We will provide you with the new address for the storage once the migration is complete. You will need to update any of the old connection strings you have been using to connect to a project storage space with the new address. We will provide full instructions on how to do this in the migration confirmation email