Towards Efficient Scientific Data Management using Cloud Storage

Building more in-house datacenters to backup explosively growing scientific datasets is neither cost-effective nor in line with government green initiative. Cloud computing is emerging as a viable platform for data storage, collaboration and disaster recovery. We are going to develop a suite of "backup-to-cloud" tools that allows user to backup scientific datasets and applications into the cloud, and use cloud storage as a distribution platform. Our tool is optimized under technical and economical constraints posed by common cloud storage. We use both public and private cloud platforms to conduct feasibility study from performance, security, scalability and cost perspectives.

Some "backup-to-cloud" tools have been offered on the market. Unlike most of these tools which are designed for individual use and optimized for random access, our deliverable is optimized for bandwidth and space efficiency and will be more useful for non-NASA users with extremely large datasets. Enterprise with growing backup demand can use our deliverable to archive their datasets into the cloud and cut IT operational cost.

Many NASA scientific applications are data-intensive, i.e., generating sheer amount of data on a regular basis. Data backup is a mandatory requirement for some valuable datasets. In the past, NASA has patterned with 3rd-party vendors to setup remote backup. The deliverable of this proposal will provide NASA with a suite of automated self-servicing data management tools using cloud as data store. Using our deliverable, NASA can 1) backup its valuable datasets off-site reliably, securely and economically, without dedicated personnel and facilities; 2) accelerate disaster recovery of its online applications in the cloud in a timely fashion; 3) distribute large scientific datasets to a large population of users with minimal cost incurred.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 6) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.