Research Infrastructure: CC* Data Storage: Foundational Campus Research Storage for Digital Transformation

The University of California, Riverside (UCR) is engaged on a transformative project to revitalize its research storage infrastructure with a Ceph-based solution. This aligns with UCR's recent ascension to the Association of American Universities (AAU) in July 2023 and commitment to supporting its diverse research community as a distinguished Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Modernizing research storage is crucial for maintaining AAU standing as one of only four HSIs in this elite group, and empowering UCR to serve the needs of its students and the Inland region. The enhanced infrastructure will catalyze innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration across campus. The project establishes a state-of-the-art, integrated storage system built upon Ceph's capabilities. The initial system will consist of 20 nodes, each with 160TB of physical storage across 8 spinning disks. Additionally, there will be another three nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) solid-state drives, providing 23TB of high input/output operations per second (IOPS) storage per node for a total of 460TB, yielding a resilient, scalable, and high-performance environment supporting diverse research endeavors. Integration with the National Research Platform's Nautilus Cluster furthers UCR's national impact, propelling advancements in data-intensive fields. This initiative will fuel groundbreaking discoveries in several scientific areas, including Deep Learning, metabolomics, critical air challenges, big data problems in agriculture and hydrology, honeybee research, neurocognitive imaging in aging, and more. The storage system will advance multidisciplinary projects, and position UCR as a front runner in inclusive, cutting-edge research. 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.