Storage

The College of Engineering provides network file storage free of charge for research labs, courses, projects, student groups, and administrative units. The server, named ENGNAS, has a 1.5PB storage array that supports a range of services for Windows, Linux, and MacOS systems. It is also mounted on ENGIT managed workstations, in computer labs, on Engineering’s Grid, and on IS&T’s Shared Compute Cluster. It’s also easily mounted on other systems.

ENGNAS provides a fast, secure, centrally-managed, storage environment.  Files are protected by periodic snapshots that users can access to recover files. And the server is replicated several times a day to a fail-over server at the MGHPCC in Holyoke.  ENGNAS is located in the University’s secure, environmentally managed, and highly available data-center, and is monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by automated tools that notify ENG-IT staff of any service issues. All hard drives are all enterprise grade, replaced at 5 years of service, and covered by a next day maintenance contract from the NAS manufacturer.

Using this service relieves departmental and lab administrators of the responsibility, labor, and expense to physically administer and maintain a network file storage service. Note, labs that expect to generate data on the order of tens of Terabytes will be asked to discuss their usage needs and our current cost recovery strategy.