UFRC website updated and new storage offerings added

The Research Computing website has been updated to describe changes in the storage offerings and prices.

Changes to the website:

  1. The Services menu tab is now grouped by system: HiPerGator, ResShield & ResVault, Campus Research Network, and Advanced Support.
  2. The page About > Policies > Storage has been rewritten to describe the changes in storage services, including the new storage at low cost for keeping very large amounts of data accessible, but at lower performance than the familiar /ufrc file system. The different storage types are explained, as well as the different ways to use storage.
  3. The page Help > Getting Started now provides the general guidance to using Research Computing services for computation and data storage. It also lists other options available to faculty at UF for accessing applications and storing data.
  4. A new (very long) index page has been created as a directory to the entire website, in order to help users find information more quickly.
  5. The price sheets have been updated.  There are now separate purchase forms for the purchase of cores and storage for the hardware’s lifetime (considered equipment purchase), and the purchase of the use of cores and storage for a requested time period (considered a service by auditors).
  6. The UF prices, which are subsidized, have not changed; commercial prices and discounted commercial prices have been adjusted after the annual review.

Changes to storage services:

  1. There was not found a good single word to distinguish the new storage (costing $25/TB/year as service, or $115/TB as equipment) from the existing /ufrc storage, as everyone plans to use it in different ways and for different reasons. Therefore we refer to the two storage types as “orange” (the new type) and “blue” (the existing type). The storage has been designed to support different use cases, as summarized at Help > Getting Started > Storage.
  2. We no longer support replicated storage. All storage types are equipped with RAID technology, but we found that a single synchronous copy poses problems. Rather, what is needed is historical copies of older versions of files. This can currently be provided with the tape backup option described at About > Policies > Storage > Data Protection; development of a disk-based backup option is also underway.
  3. UF Research Computing can only provide storage that is accessible through HiPerGator. We have a number of customers who have purchased storage that is only accessible through their workstations and servers, and where users and groups are controlled by Active Directory. These customers will be contacted to work out a transition plan over the next 9 months. Going forward, all storage supported by UFRC will require GatorLink authentication (same as Active Directory), but management of users and groups must be controlled by HiPerGator systems.