At IU, what is the Scholarly Data Archive (SDA)?

The Scholarly Data Archive (SDA) provides extensive capacity (15 PB) for storing and accessing research data. It uses the High Performance Storage System (HPSS), a hierarchical storage management software package. The system is located at both Indiana University Bloomington and IUPUI, providing automatic off-site copies of data for disaster recovery. The SDA is HIPAA-aligned, but users should encrypt electronic protected health information (ePHI) data before storing it on the SDA.

The SDA (formerly known as MDSS) is part of a rich suite of distributed storage services that IU offers; other services include the Research File System (RFS) and the Slashtmp file-sharing service, for temporarily storing files too large to be shared via an email attachment.

The SDA uses Kerberos, the widely used network protocol for secure authentication. With Kerberos, secure transactions are ensured because plaintext passwords are not sent over the network. The HPSS software also supports protocols like SFTP and HTTPS that enable encrypted data transfer.

To obtain an account, see At IU, how can I apply for an account on the SDA or RFS?

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