Beta File System is a UU (ITS) facilitated network storage with a functional layer provided by the Science Faculty (ICT-Beta). This means in-house developed and maintained network storage located in the Netherlands (Almere datacenter and UMC-Science Park)
| ♻️Data lifecycle | Suitable for active data. | |
| 🔐Data types | Suitable for privacy sensitive data only when the data is encrypted (no default provision), always consult RDM-support when in doubt. |
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| 💻Storage capacity | Suitable for large volume research data |
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| 👥Collaboration features | Sharing data is possible with UU-employees/students only (solisID required) |
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| 🔑Access control | Read only/Write access can be managed from the Beta Self Service Provider for user-access management. Any solis-id can be added as user; both students and employees. | |
| 🧮Costs | Costs are 2 euro/TB/month for single storage or 4 euro for double storage (aka backup or disaster recovery) – Prices 2025 – Costs are charged on basis of the reserved volume size (folder quota – expandable at any time) |
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| 🛠️Other Functionality | choice between single (NetApp RAID triple parity) or double storage (disaster recovery) default 24 x hourly data snapshots current day + 1 daily snapshot kept for 60 days (snapshots use up additional space depending on amount of file changes) auto compression and de-duplication of data (resulting in lower data use depending on file type) available protocols: smb/cifs, sftp, default mount on Gemini HPC (Linux interactive shell) |
BFS is not suitable for:
- FAIR aspects of data storage
- Collaborating outside UU (solis-id required)
- Incorporating metadata schemes
- For long term archiving, sharing and publishing of data.
Differentiating features of BFS (compared to YoDa):
- Science BFS can provide single storage that can serve as an off premise backup to data only (half the pricepoint)
- Science BFS provides other network-protocols for connecting to the service (smb, sftp)
- Science BFS can act as a NFS Volume mount
- Science BFS can default be mounted on the Gemini faculty HPC
For even more info see: Science BFS
for storage requests contact rdm-beta@uu.nl