The majority of the costs of the current mass storage have been covered by a FEDER grant obtained by the GIGA. However, some operating costs are not covered by this grant, such as costs linked to the improvement of the performances, software licenses, offline archiving system, etc.
Moreover, the volume of data generated by new technologies keeps increasing exponentially. Our mass storage is filling itself up quickly, and extensions (disk and tape) are expansive.
# Mass storage costs
However **this is a safe and secure way of store data and we think all precious research data should be stored on the mass storage as long as needed!**
The majority of the costs of the current mass storage have been covered by a FEDER grant obtained by the GIGA. However, some operating costs are not covered by this grant, such as costs linked to the improvement of the performances, the offline archiving system, the extension of the maintenance contract, etc. Moreover, the volume of data generated by new technologies keeps increasing exponentially, our mass storage is filling up quickly, and we need to extend it to store all data generated by GIGA members.
For all these reasons, we ask PIs who are applying for grants for projects that will produce large amount of data (i.e. 1Tb and more) to ask for money for the storage of the produced data. This money can then be used to extend the mass storage disk space or tape library.
The price of disk and tape extension vary over time, but also according to the volume bought (the more we buy, the cheapest). From previous times, we can estimate that 1Tb of data saved on disk (with 2 backup copies on tape) costs 80€ per year, and 1 Tb of data archived offline (2 copies on tape) costs 20€ per year (not including the cost of running a cooling system in the server room and maintainers' salaries).
For all these reasons, the GIGA decided to give to each research team a certain amount of free space on the mass storage, and to charge any additional space used by them. The revenues from these fees will be used exclusively for costs linked to the mass storage management and extension.
Of note, **the mass storage is a safe and secure way of store data and we think all precious research data should be stored on the mass storage as long as needed!**
# Billing process
## Free space
The free space assigned to each team (PI led team) is **based on the number of people in the team, with 500Gb per team member**.
For example, a team that counts five members will be assigned 5\*500Gb, thus 2.5Tb of free space on the mass storage.
The number of members taken into account for this calculation is the same as the number of member used for communal expenses billing.
## Additional space
If the space used by a team exceeds its free space, the additional space will be charged **30€/Tb/year**.
To use the previous example: If a five members' team occupied 3Tb on the mass storage,
it has exceeded its free quota of 2.5Tb by 0.5Tb. They will need to pay 15€ a year for this additional space.
Of note, this is far below the actual cost of storage (disk space + 2 backup copies on tape in another location + maintenance).
## Costs calculation and billing
Disk space usage of each team is automatically recorded every day. At the end of each billing period (usually 3 months), average utilization is calculated and the cost is determined accordingly.
This cost will be included in the GIGA communal expenses bill ("Facturation des frais communs GIGA")
that each team receives on a regular basis (usually every 3 months).
**WARNING**: The billing system discussed here is **completely independent from the quota set on each team's folder**
(see [here](mass-storage/mass-storage-quota) for more information about quotas).
So to go back to our previous example, if our team of five members needs to occasionally be able to store up to 4Tb, it will have a quota set to 4Tb,
but if its average disk usage is 3Tb, that team will pay only for the 500Gb exceeding its 2.5Tb allowance.
## What happen when a folder is shared by several teams ?
When several teams share a folder, the volume of that folder will be divided
between the different teams.
# How to reduce disk usage ?
There are several solutions to reduce the space used by your team. Among them, you can find:
- Avoid duplicating files. If you want to identify duplicated files in your folder, please ask the [Bioinformatics team](contacts) to run a script to detect them.
-[Compress](mass-storage/mass-storage-compression) big files (we recommend to start compressing files when they are bigger than 200Mb)
- Delete temporary/obsolete files (intermediate files not needed anymore for example)
- Send files you need to keep but do not need to quickly access anymore to the GIGA [archiving system](mass-storage/mass-storage-backup-archive#Offline-data-archiving)
For more tips about data maintenance, read the [following page](mass-storage/mass-storage-management-practices#data-maintenance).
# When and how to get money for data storage ?
If you are applying for grants for projects that will produce large amount of data (i.e. few hundreds of Gb and more), you should definitely ask for money for the storage of these data.
In FNRS research grants for example, you can add an entry for "Data Archiving" ("Archivage de données") in the section "Support Operating Costs" ("Frais de fonctionnement - frais divers").
If you need help to estimate the amount of data your project will produce, please contact the platform that will generate them.
If you need help to estimate the amount of data your project will produce, please contact the platform that will generate them.
If you would like more information, please contact the [Bioinformatic team](contacts).
- Genomics: nextgenseq.giga@ulg.ac.be
- Proteomics: proteomics.giga@uliege.be
- Cell imaging: alexandre.hego@uliege.be
- Human in vivo Imaging: mri.crc.giga@uliege.be
- Human Electrophysiology: electrophy.crc.giga@uliege.be
- Preclinical in vivo Imaging, Data processing & Radiophysics, Research & Development in radiosynthesis: methods.crc.giga@uliege.be
