"Cold" Research Data Storage at The University of Sydney

We have accumulated research data for over a decade in our centrally-provided research data store (RDS) service, and some of the data belongs to research projects that have finished, but still require data to be retained. We wanted a way of storing this inactive data in a cheaper tier of storage, while empowering researchers to control their project s data storage tier. We therefore created a new tier of research data storage that we call "RDS cold storage". During our migration to our current RDS platform, we identified data belonging to inactive projects, and instead of moving them to the new online RDS platform, we moved them into the new RDS cold storage service. Researchers were informed of the move and were sent instructions on how they could request projects be restored to active storage. To date, we have moved approximately 1.2 petabytes of inactive project data to RDS cold storage with very few complaints from researchers, and this has freed up our online storage for active projects.