Decision delayed for 100-petabyte Oz research storage cloud

RDSI host universities and vendors must wait for crucial meeting

Australia's Research Data Storage Infrastructure Project (RDSI) has delayed the announcement of its preferred vendors by a month.

There's nothing sinister about the delay, which RDSI Director Dr Nick Tate said is attributable to the fact that the new date – April 27th – means a meeting of the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) can consider response to the RFP issued in January 2012.

“We cannot report back before that in any case,” he said. “This gives us more time to review.”

Vendors will therefore have a month and a day more in which to fret, as the announcement was first scheduled for March 26th.

RDSI is an effort to create a collection of shared storage resources that will house research data. Users will be able to tap into data from any of the universities that establish RDSI nodes, which will link over AARNET to allow rapid access to, and transfer of, data. The combined data collection is expected to eventually exceed 100 petabytes.

RDIS currently considering bids from universities who wish to host nodes and proposals from storage vendors about products they feel can deliver the project's goals.

Dr Tate told The Register said he is “looking at a wide range of solutions” and “does not anticipate one overarching technology choice.” Each mode will instead be left to choose from technologies and vendors approved by RDSI and capable of operating under the project's data sharing regime.

An initial list of succesful nodes and a definitive list of succesful vendors will be released in late April. ®