General Data Storage Options

The Research Computing (RC) team is responsible for the procurement and ongoing maintenance of several data storage options, including active and archive storage solutions. If you are affiliated with Northeastern, you can request one or more storage solutions to meet your storage needs. It is highly recommended that if you anticipate needing storage as part of a grant requirement, schedule a consultation with a Research Computing staff member to understand what storage options would best meet your research needs. You can schedule an online consultation on the RC website.

Note

If you have an account on Discovery, see Storage Accessible on Discovery for details on the storage available to you specifically for use with Discovery’s compute resources. The options listed below are not connected to Discovery.

NAME: /research
  • DESCRIPTION: This storage tier is intended to be a repository for data derived from equipment such as lab machines, instruments, etc. The performance capabilities are not intended for parallel or high performance workloads. Data are backed up and a second copy is created. You can request storage on /research by submitting a New Storage Space request. See the section “Connecting to /research” below for information on how to connect to this storage.
  • QUOTA: Each group can request up to 35TB of free storage across all supplemental storage tiers: /work/<groupname>, /research () and /nese.
NAME: /nese
  • DESCRIPTION: This is archival, non-performant storage that is intended for researchers who need to have a long-term storage option for their data.
  • QUOTA: Each group can request up to 35TB of free storage across all supplemental storage tiers: /work/<groupname>, /research () and /nese.

Important

If you are not connected to the campus internet, you must be connected to the university’s VPN (GlobalProtect) before you can access these storage systems. You can find detailed information about downloading and using the GlobalProtect VPN in the ServiceNow Knowledge Base.

Connecting to /research

After you have received notification that your shared storage folder on /research is ready for you to use, you can connect to it on your laptop. Use the following procedures to connect to /research from either a Windows PC or a Macbook. If you are not on the campus internet, you will need to first be connected to Northeastern’s VPN before you can connect to /research.

Windows

  1. Open File Explorer.
  2. In the left pane, select This PC.
  3. On the Computer tab, select Map network drive.
  4. Select any letter not currently mapped to a drive. It does not matter what letter.
  5. In the Folder box, type \\nunet.neu.edu\rc-shares\<sharename>, where <sharename> is the name of your shared storage. If you want this drive to reconnect automaically every time you log in, check Reconnect at sign in.
  6. Click Finish. Your shared folder now be available in File Explorer.

Mac

  1. Click the Finder icon, and in the Finder window, select Go, then click Connect to Server.
  2. In the Server Address field type smb://nunet.neu.edu/rc-shares/<sharename> where <sharename> is the name of the share you want to connect to.
  3. Click Connect.
  4. If you are prompted to enter your name and password for the nunet server, select Connect as Registered User, in the Name field type NUNET\<yourusername>, (where <yourusername> is your NU username) and type your NU password in the Password field. If you want to connect to /research automatically when you log in to your computer, select Remember this password in my keychain.
  5. Click Connect. Your share should appear as a folder in the Finder window.