Swestore

In scientific areas such as high energy physics (the Large Hadron Collider at CERN), climate modelling, bioinformatics, bioimaging etc., the demands for research data storage and research data services are increasing dramatically. To serve these and other user communities, SNIC has appointed this working group to design a storage strategy, taking into account the research community needs. For more information please contact Swestore Support

Swestore

Swestore is Research Data Storage Infrastructure operated by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC).

The aim of this nationally accessible storage (Swestore) is to build a robust, flexible and expandable system that can be used in most cases where access to large scale storage is needed. To the user it should appear as a single large system, while it is desirable that some parts of the system are deployed and distributed across SNIC centres to benefit from the advantages of, among other things, locality and redundancy effects. We continuously investigate new technologies that are suitable to implement Swestore. This storage solution is intended as a versatile short and medium term storage (one to four years allocations), for large-scale research data. It is intended and best suitable for so called “warm” data that is not analysed or processed right now but it is still relevant for the active research project. Project allocations are usually not backed up unless agreed differently and all files, i.e. digital objects, exist in two replicas in two geographically different locations. The main purpose of this type of storage is to offload the fast storage (Center Storage) during the active research phase and to move data from and to SNIC Centers.

Today, Swestore is available as two separate services built on dCache and iRODS technology, and they exist under the names, Swestore-dCache and Swestore-iRODS.

Documentation for Swestore-dCache

Documentation for Swestore-iRODS

Title

The resources provided by Swestore are made available through open procedures such that the best Swedish research is supported and new research is facilitated. The purpose of Swestore allocations, granted by Swedish National Allocations Committee (SNAC), is to provide large scale data storage for “live” or “working” research data, also known as active research data.

Due to the VR funding, the free allocations on Swestore have some usage limitations.

• Swestore is NOT supposed to be used for backups and such requests for allocation will be rejected. Please, check with your university (home institution/organisation) IT department about backup services, strategies and policies in place. If such services do not exist or if you can’t access them for different reasons, please contact us at support@swestore.se;
• Swestore is NOT supposed to be used as archiving service, long-term storage or repository for “static” data. Once data is no longer in the process of change, and decision on which data should be retained shared and/or preserved has been taken, data should be moved toward appropriate data services. The higher education institutions are responsible for archiving and long-term preservation of research data produced by researchers employed by them;

Glossary

Active (Research) data

is data that is being worked on as part of research project and therefore subject to change. The files containing data will need to be accessed and amended or updated as new data is gathered or processed.

Static (Research) data

is data that is no longer in the process of change and it can be prepared for preservation and reuse.

Backup

is a copy of the digital data to be stored and used as a replacement in case the main copy is either deleted or corrupted.

Archive

is a service to record, organise, and store (digital) items in optimal conditions, with standardised labelling to ensure their longevity and continued access. The service is based on application of metadata, archiving policies, records management, and digital preservation actions. Archivists make decisions on selection and retention of items which are usually governed by supporting policies.