The Grainger College of Engineering
Engineering IT Shared Services

File and Data Storage

 

Engineering IT Shared Services' staff of technical professionals can provide a range of robust IT infrastructure services to meet the needs of the College. Engineering IT provides private data storage services for all faculty, staff and students within the Grainger College of Engineering. 

If Engineering IT does not have or cannot provide the solution required  for your project or workflow there are several other on-premise and cloud solutions available.

 

Top Storage FAQs

Are you working with sensitive data?
Whether it's FERPA, HIPAA, CUI, or other sensitive data, your data needs to be handled safely and stored in secure repositories. If you're unsure that your data is sensitive contact your Primary Investigator and/or funding agency.

Do you have a 'Data Management Plan'?
Your funding agency may require one but regardless it's a best practice to think about the life cycle of your data, how it is obtained, organized, and retired are good starting discussion points. 

How critical is data loss?
Many funding agencies require you to ensure that data is preserved, regardless, losing data can be a loss of significant time. Considering backup or disaster recovery options is generally worth the time and money. 

 

Additional Questions

There are other questions to consider when determining the appropriate storage option for your project, you can find some of them below.
If you would like to meet with someone to discuss your needs please email the Research Technology Facilitator, Ethan Conner (ewconner@illinois.edu). 

  • How large are the files/data sets are you working with?
  • Does your project have external collaborators?
  • How rapidly will your storage needs grow?
  • Does your project require high performance or throughput computation?

 

Storage Solutions (At-a-Glance)

Disclaimer: A system listed as "Compliant" in our matrix for our case means that system follows best practices. Some cloud services will require additional configuration to adhere to individual policies. Additionally, for full compliance a self-assessment for client machines and processes is required.

A full-sized version of this matrix can be found here.

Last updated June 10th 2025
  On-Premise Solutions Hybrid Cloud Service Solutions
Engineering IT Storage (*Partnered with Technology Services) Research Storage as a Service (RSaaS) Taiga & Granite Nightingale Illinois Data Bank Open Storage Network Azure Storage
(Microsoft)		 Amazon S3
(AWS)		 OneDrive for Business (Office 365) U of I Box Google Apps @ Illinois
Service Information Virtual Hosting RSaaS NCSA's
Taiga & Granite		 NCSA's
Nightingale		 Illinois Data Bank The Open Storage Network Introduction to Azure Storage AWS @ Illinois OneDrive for Business U of I Box Google Apps @ Illinois
Where to get help engrit-help@illinois.edu help@ncsa.illinois.edu researchdata@library.illinois.edu OSN's Slack Network azure-support@illinois.edu aws-support@illinois.edu Tech Services Help Desk

Cost of storage

 

(As of 6/10/2025)

 Total cost is calculated by specifications of virtual machine, system backups are required. For more information follow the link below:

Virtual Hosting Service 		 $2.76/TB/Month
$33.12/TB/Year
(Billed monthly, and chargeable to grants)


Illinois Campus Cluster Program Storage 

5TB of Taiga & 50TB of Granite provided through Illinois Computes for Illinois Researchers

Taiga: $32.01/TB/year

Granite: $15.62/TB/year
(External user pricing available)

  Up to $2,500 in total costs covered through Illinois Computes for Illinois Researchers

Nightingale:
$75.74/TB/month
(External user pricing available)		 2 TB/year

(No cost for University of Illinois Reasearchers)		 1-50TB (With approved allocation)(Get an Allocation) Azure has a pricing calculator available Amazon S3 has tiered pricing for their storage OneDrive at Illinois provides 5TB storage for individuals Terms of service with Box are currently in flux, unlimited storage is suspected to change.  Terms of service with Google have changed, unlimited storage changing soon. 
Amount of storage provided per team (group) Storage allotments can scale based on needs of the research group N/A Determined by team that receives an allocation Storage allotments can scale based on needs of the research group OneDrive is part of Microsoft Teams and provides unlimited storage for teams Terms of service with Box are currently in flux, unlimited storage is suspected to change.  Terms of service with Google have changed, unlimited storage changing soon. 
Maximum size for a single file Dependent on OS and File System N/A Taiga has a 1TB per 1.5Million inode limit N/A 15 GB
(can ingest via Box)		 5TB Upper limit depends on the Azure solution, their Blob Storage has a file size limit of 200 TB 5 TB
(AWS Multipart Upload)		 10 GB
maximum of 20,000 files per subfolder		 150 GB
maximum of 15,000 files per subfolder		 5 TB
maximum of 400,000 files per subfolder
Approved for storing FERPA data COMPLIANT COMPLIANT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT  NOT COMPLIANT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT
Approved for storing HIPAA data NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT COMPLIANT FOLDERS ARE AVAILABLE NOT COMPLIANT
Approved for storing CUI data NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT COMPLIANT NOT  COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT NOT COMPLIANT
Web Access N/A Web access and file transfer available through Globus N/A OSN Portal Microsoft Azure AWS @ Illinois OneDrive for Business U of I Box Google Drive
Mobile Access N/A Mobile access available through Globus Responsive design works on  most devices 3rd party apps supporting S3 Azure Mobile App AWS Console Mobile App OneDrive for Business app Box Apps  Google Drive Mobile App
Desktop Access Can be mounted to Operating Systems via NFS or SMB API available Cyberduck Download Many storage solutions through Azure has ability to mount via NFS or SMB Creating a File Share for S3 OneDrive for Business Sync software Download the Box Drive software from the Box website Google Drive desktop software
Backup & Recovery $53/TB/Year RSaaS Disaster Recovery (DR) Service
$3.00/TB/Year		 Disaster Recovery software available on request N/A N/A Cloud services are often replicated to different sites; where those sites are located is worth consideration when working with sensitive data.

Private Files and Home Directories

Engineering IT provides home directories for faculty, staff, and students. Faculty and Staff are charged $79/TB/year, billed to the department. These private folders can be mounted as network drives. 
Students can access their home directory storage through an Engineering Workstation Lab computer or via the Citrix application. 

 

Data Migration or Transfer tools

 

List of Storage Solutions

 

Funding Agency Repositories/Requirements

In August 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) updated their policy memorandum directing federal agencies to develop policies to make the publications and data resulting from federally funded research freely available to the public. Each funding agency may have specific requirements that could influence data access and storage decisions. More detailed information about funding agency requirements can be found at the links below.