File Services for Research provides Brown University research departments with a location in which files can be stored, backed up, and shared with members of the Brown community using Brown ID’s and groups. Space is allocated to each research lab or PI with an ITHelp request, and security groups are required to define access to the data. The data is protected locally via snapshots but doesn’t have geo-redundancy (secondary copy).

• Best for: Brown faculty and staff researchers looking to store, share and protect research data.
• Accessibility: The data is accessible on Brown's campus networks (including VPN and wireless). Also accessible directly from High Performance Computing Cluster (Oscar).
• Sharing: The data can be shared with both Brown and non-Brown collaborators via Globus.
• Limitations: No geo-redundancy (secondary copy)
• Rate: $50/TB/Year when storing above free/grant allocations

File Services for Research provides Brown University research departments with a location in which files can be stored, backed up, and shared with members of the Brown community using Brown ID’s and groups. Space is allocated to each research lab or PI with an ITHelp request, and security groups are required to define access to the data. The data is replicated daily to our disaster recovery site for True geo-redundant data protection. The data is accessible on Brown's campus networks (including VPN and wireless).

• Best for: Brown faculty and staff researchers looking to store, share and protect research data.
• Accessibility: The data is accessible on Brown's campus networks (including VPN and wireless). Also accessible directly from the High Performance Computing Cluster (Oscar).
• Sharing: The data can be shared with both Brown and non-Brown collaborators via Globus.
• Rate: $100/TB/Year when storing above free/grant allocations

Departmental File Services provides University departments with a location in which files can be stored, backed up, and shared across the department. The service can be accessed by mapping the drive on your computer ( Windows Explorer on PC or Finder on a Mac), or by visiting webfiles.brown.edu in a web browser. (For researchers, please check out "Campus File Storage replicated/non-replicated / Research services " section)

• Best for: Backing up and sharing official department documents, ensuring longevity of documents after file authors leave Brown.
• Limitations: Can only be accessed on the Brown network or with VPN. Not as easy to access as consumer services (no app, web access is a bit clunky). Sharing is not easy: no sharing with people outside of Brown, no sharing with people who don't have access to the department folders.
• More info: Documentation

Oscar storage, also known as Computational Data Storage, is a high-performance data storage system which is accessible from any computer connected to Brown's campus network, or from outside the network via ssh. What sets this option apart from the others is that it is directly connected to Brown’s primary supercomputer, “Oscar”, making computation easier. If you don’t intend to compute your data with Brown’s supercomputer, you may consider using Campus File Storage instead. You could also use Oscar storage for computing and then move your results to Campus File Storage for greater accessibility, reliability, and protection.

• Synonyms: Oscar Data, HPC Storage, GPFS (historically)
• Best for: High performance storage of research data, perform computation on your data using Brown’s supercomputer
• Limitations: Not accessible on all campus networks.
• Rate: $100/TB/Year when storing above free/grant allocations
• More info: Documentation | Request these services

Stronghold is a secure computing and storage environment that enables Brown researchers to analyze sensitive data while complying with regulatory or contractual requirements.

• Best for: Storing data with data usage agreements, FISMA, etc.
• Rate: $100/TB/Year when storing above free/grant allocations
• More info: Request this service

Hibernate is a secure, reliable, research data archive solution. Hibernate is a Brown OIT archival service for the research community to migrate inactive data off active Network-attached storage (NAS) platforms onto a lower cost, long-term retention environment.

• Hibernate leverages StarFish an application that provides a metadata and rules-based management framework for large file systems. StarFish makes storage tiering easy: moving data, reporting, zones.

LabArchives is a cloud-based electronic lab notebook that can be used by researchers, instructors, and students for input and organization of laboratory data, information sharing, and collaboration, and for saving historical versions of files. It is appropriate for use in a wide variety of laboratories, including biological sciences, chemistry and physical sciences, and engineering, among others.

LabArchives at Brown provides unlimited storage space. The current size limit per file is 4GB.

LabArchives at Brown is not approved for storing files containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), or Brown Restricted Information.

• More info: Documentation

The Brown Digital Repository (BDR) is a place to gather, index, store, preserve, and make available digital assets produced via the scholarly, instructional, research, and administrative activities at Brown.

The Brown University Library maintains the repository as a service to the Brown community; it provides:

• A searchable index of digital objects shared by the Brown community.
• Permanent, secure storage for personal and departmental digital objects.
• Off-site backups of digital content.
• Tools for sharing and publishing digital content.
• Data curation, format migration, and preservation services.

Faculty and researchers interested in using the Brown Digital Repository as a platform for programmatic data management, storage, and publication should contact the Library (bdr@brown.edu) for information about opportunities for research consulting and project development support.

• More info: Documentation

Google Drive gives you space to store and share documents. The native Google document formats allow for real-time collaboration and file history. You can also store unconverted files of various types in your Google Drive. It's easy to share files with members of the Brown community (including Google Groups) and non-Brown Google accounts; files can be shared with view-only, comment, or edit access. Google also has a really nice feature where you can scan in handwritten documents and have them converted to text. You can access files on the web, through a mobile app, or by installing Google Drive on your computer (which makes it act like a folder on your computer).

• Best for: Collaboration in native Google files, easy access from anywhere, small amount of total storage, sharing with Google Groups.
• Limitations: Data transfer speeds may be very limited, Globus can provide high bandwidth data transfers.
• More info: Documentation | Security