Services roadmaps

We are restructuring how we handle light-weight, interactive workloads. By moving development and light-weight testing tasks off login nodes and into a dedicated, (possibly quota-free) partition, we ensure system stability while providing users with a responsive environment for their day-to-day computing needs.

We are upgrading our administrative system (MAS) to recognize GPU resources as a distinct resource type alongside CPU. This initiative ensures that GPU consumption - whether on national machines or external systems like LUMI - is allocated, tracked, and reported with the same visibility as traditional CPU resources.

Puhuri is the name of the portal used to administer LUMI projects. We are working on integrating this portal more tightly with our existing administrative system (MAS). This will ensure a more seamless experience for Sigma2 users when utilizing LUMI and the national resources.

It is planned that Sigma2 will get access to quantum computing resources in 2026 through the LUMI consortium (VLQ). This initiative concerns facilitating access to these resources.

We are implementing a set of automated administrative protocols in our administrative system (MAS) to improve the user experience. By shifting routine tasks such as account management and quota monitoring to automated systems, we ensure that the users are actively notified of relevant events. In addition, resources remain accessible to active projects while maintaining strict security and efficiency standards.

This is a further development of the interactive compute partition, allowing subscriptions to the partition at the organizational level, e.g. via Feide.

We will assist the Norwegian research community in safeguarding datasets currently stored abroad, which may be at risk of deletion or loss.

To improve visibility and decision-making at the project level, we will introduce heatmaps in MAS that visually represent storage usage patterns. This feature will empower project leaders to gain a deeper understanding, effectively manage, and optimize data storage resources.

Use cases and functionalities which were not handled as part of the baseline product development during the Archive2021 project will be addressed as part of the NIRD Research data Archive product development process. API development will be prioritized to allow metadata harvesting by metadata registries. Functionalities such as customized data ingestion, customized search and reporting will be addressed.

We will improve the interoperability and findability of the NIRD Research Data Archive to enhance its overall FAIRness, making research data easier to discover, access, and integrate across systems. The Research data Archive will continue to evolve with new features and stronger support for FAIR principles. Development will be co-designed with researchers and key stakeholders to ensure it meets community needs.

The data landscape is becoming more complex with the explosion of new technologies and research frontiers. AI/ML is just paradigmatic of this revolution. A variety of data with different requirements with regard to access and protection is produced. We will design and adapt the services to data which require confidentiality while still be free from regulations related to health personal sensitivity.

We will simplify and centralize the S3 account management processes on NIRD. This strategic change will strengthen security protocols, establish uniform control, and drive down both administrative and operational overhead.

We will simplify and automate storage quota management, improving transparency and ensuring better control over resource usage on NIRD services (For eg: Data Peak, Data Lake).

We will strengthen our information security practices and build customer trust by obtaining ISO 27001 certification, an internationally recognized standard for Information Security Management Systems.

The paradigm is to make Norwegian scientific data as open as possible, and as restricted as necessary. Finding mechanisms to archive, publish and share large volumes of unstructured scientific data with some requirements for higher security and access controls is still a challenge. Through domain expert and national provider consultation we will investigate and develop a comprehensive architectural design which can support both open research data and facilitate controlled access to sensitive and restricted research assets, ensuring privacy and compliance are baked into the design.

We will address data management needs arising from steadily increasing data volumes in close collaboration with user communities and key stakeholders. We will focus on adopting Research Objects (ROs) as a foundation for improved, future-oriented data management. ROs will first be introduced on NIRD for selected pilot projects and later expanded to all projects.

We will establish an on-demand backup service for a limited number of NIRD Data Lake tenants to strengthen data resilience and business continuity, ensuring critical information can be quickly recovered in case of loss, corruption, or system failure.

We will enhance the NIRD Central Data Library (CDL) service by integrating a robust data management solution that improves data accessibility, consistency, and lifecycle governance. This effort will extend the service’s capabilities, streamline data operations, and provide a foundation for future scalability and advanced analytics.

We will increase the effort in identifying and work on removing duplicated data to improve storage efficiency, performance, and data quality across NIRD and other storage systems.

We will review and propose adjustments to the sustainability, support model, and governance of the new Research Data Archive. The aim is to explore opportunities to better utilize national competencies and resources, with the potential to contribute to a more robust and efficient long-term service.

We will establish a framework for tighter collaboration with DataVerseNO, which is a popular platform among researchers and curators for archiving small datasets. Users will be guided and supported in scaling out from one service to the other.