Equipment: CC* Data Storage: Improving Research Ability with Data Storage at the University of Montana

The University of Montana (UM) proposes to acquire and provision a flexible, cost-effective, tiered data storage system that increases the overall storage capacity of the university to 5.3PB and improves performance and researcher usability. The storage is a step in a larger plan by UM to progressively improve its research cyberinfrastructure by updating data centers, providing high-speed connections to campus sites, and deploying a high-performance computing cluster and Science DMZ. The storage upgrade supports project-driven needs identified by UM researchers, including fuel treatments in forestry, invasive species modeling, geophysics research, permafrost modeling, computational ecology, and SARS COV-2 variant detection. The data storage system leverages a 100GB internal network for processing and communications between the head node, metadata servers, and object storage servers. The UM storage system will share 20% of the resource through the Open Science Data Federation. The UM storage supports a diverse research community spread across multiple institutions within the Montana University System, several Tribal Colleges, and the national research community. Also, in collaboration with West Big Data Innovation Hub, the project is co-hosting a GO FAIR US event bringing exposure to Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) principles. In addition, the project provides experiential learning opportunities for select information technology students by engaging them to participate in the deployment, maintenance, and training associated with the project. This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.