Starting from 01-01-2026 a new pricing structure will affect storage services like Yoda, BFS and virtual servers. You can find the new price plan on the ICT-Bèta Wiki (login required)
How to mitigate the rising costs?
- Make sure you are storing your data efficiently:
- implement regular clean-ups of your storage space and remove redundant files. See Quick Guide: Data Storage Clean Up.
- if using Yoda, make sure your data archive is in the Yoda Vault and not in the active Research space.
- if using BFS, use the single storage functionality for data that is already backed up elsewhere.
- If considering alternative storage options, make sure that these are secure and suitable for your data.
The faculty has now made SDA available for secure storage for large volumes of static research data. See Surf Data Archive
Do you have questions or need advice: Contact faculty support.
What to consider?
Technical and procedural aspects are important to consider when selecting a suitable storage, for example:
| ♻️Data lifecycle | Is storage needed for active data (with frequent access and use, usually during a project) or for cold/static data (usually after project ends)? | |
| 🔐Data types | Are you storing personal or otherwise sensitive data? Note that not all storage options are suitable for this. | |
| 💻Storage capacity | How much data you expect to store? |
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| 👥Collaboration features | Do you need to share data with collaborators within or outside your organization? |
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| 🔑Access control | How should data be accessed? Do you need different access rights for different collaborators? |
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| ☁️Connectivity and availability | How you need to connect/transfer data to and from storage? Do you need to integrate storage with other platforms or computing services? | |
| 🚨Security | Consider security aspects of the storage, including also whether data is automatically backed-up and whether disaster recovery is possible. |
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| 🧮Costs | What are the costs of storage during and after the project (preservation period of the data)? | |
| 🌱Energy footprint | Some storage options have a lower energy footprint than others. |
Which data storage options are available at the UU?
The UU supports different solutions at the UU for storing and managing data – such as Yoda or Surf Research Drive among others.
- Find the UU supported storage solutions in the UU Storage Finder tool.
In addition: the Faculty of Science also provides
- a network storage service for active data with default mount on Gemini HPC – Beta File System
- access to tape library service for static data – SURF Data Archive.
For storage requests contact rdm-beta@uu.nl.
| Yoda | SURF Research Drive | Beta File System | SURF Data Archive | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ♻️Data lifecycle | active & static data includes data publication platform |
active data | active data | static data | |
| 🔐Data types | suitable for sensitive data | suitable for sensitive data | suitable for sensitive data with encryption | suitable for sensitive data with encryption | |
| 💻Storage capacity | large | large – per requested quota | large – per requested quota | large – per 10 TB quota | |
| 👥Collaboration | collaboration is possible within and outside the UU | collaboration is possible within and outside the UU | collaboration is possible within the UU | not meant for collaboration. if needed, multiple users can access data |
|
| 🔑Access control | yes | yes | yes | yes | |
| ☁️Connectivity | cloud, access via web portal, network disc or irods | cloud, access via web portal | network, embedded as network disc | cloud, access via SSH command line | |
| 🧮Costs | For overview of costs see ICT-Bèta Wiki (login required) | ||||
For more details: visit the new UU Storage Finder 2.0 (coming soon!)
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- Plan in advance! Clarifying the type, size and sensitivity of your data and considering collaboration and long-term preservation needs will help you identify storage requirements and ensure security and compliance. See Planning for Data Management.
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- Include FAIR considerations as part of your data storage workflow and ensure your storage space is well organized. See How to organize your data for reproducibility?
- Maintain your storage tidy. Schedule a regular (spring) clean-up of your data storage space. See Quick Guide: Data Storage Clean Up.
In this reading guide you will find good practices for storage and preservation or your research data.
Using a local NAS (Network Attached Storage) for storage of research data is strongly discouraged at Utrecht University (UU). Explore alternative options for your active/warm data (such as Yoda or SURF Research Drive) or your static/cold data (such as Yoda or SURF Data Archive).
A local NAS may only be used as a temporary backup in addition to one of these approved systems — never as the primary storage.
- Unsuitability for Permanent or Archival Storage
A NAS is not recognized as a compliant solution for long-term preservation, as it does not support FAIR data archiving nor meets the UU security, backup and data retention guides, which recommend institutional-grade redundancy, versioning, and disaster recovery.
- Limited Accessibility and Collaboration
A local NAS is only accessible from the network segment (VLAN) where the NAS is connected. It cannot be reached over Wi-Fi (including eduroam) or from outside the UU network (e.g., home, conferences, international collaborators). This severely restricts teamwork, especially for multi-institution or remote projects.
- Security and Compliance Risks
Local NAS devices often lack enterprise-level encryption in transit and at rest, audit trails and access logging required for sensitive data, automatic compliance with GDPR or collaborating partners mandates.
In addition NAS systems present frequently a single point of failure: hardware damage, theft, or ransomware can result in total data loss.
- No Institutional Support or Recovery
UU IT does not back up local NAS systems and in case of failure, there is no institutional recovery option— data loss is permanent.