Procurement Project NIRD2020

Illustration: The new NIRD storage infrastructure will be the first national system to be installed at Lefdal Mine Datacenter (LMD), which is in a closed mine in Nordfjordeid.
 

The procurement and implementation of the next generation of Sigma2's national storage infrastructure. 

Background

The NIRD - National Infrastructure for Research Data, was set in production in 2017 and since then it has increased in data volume and services. Users are primarily scientists from public research and education institutions in Norway. NIRD storage is utilized for NIRD Data Storage hosting projects and NIRD Research Data Archive. Computing resources are offered on NIRD to support data-intensive computing, visualization and post-/pre-processing.

The NIRD is redesigned for the evolving needs of Norwegian researchers and has been procured through the NIRD2020 project. 

NIRD2020 - Project Goal

The goal is to replace the current NIRD with a new system. The NIRD2020 projects’ major objective has been to complete the acquisition of the NIRD2020 infrastructure to fulfil existing, emerging and future user needs in harmony with the local strategies, national and international collaborations. The national policies with regards to Open Access and Re-use of Research Data have been guiding principles for the design of the new infrastructure.  

The project follows the Prosjektveiviseren project framework. The project owner is Sigma2 AS and the project manager is Dr Maria Francesca Iozzi. The ultimate accountable body for the project is the Sigma2 Board of Directors. The project working groups and the technical reference group consist of experts from the oldest Norwegian universities, whose competencies range from distributed data management to performance storage and archiving.

NIRD2020 -  Procurement

The new NIRD Storage system is procured and will be supplied by the Norwegian IT company Move AS, based on technology from IBM. The contract between Sigma2 and Move was signed on 31 December 2021.

Read more in our press release

• English: Sigma2 acquires new national storage infrastructure
• Norwegian: Sigma2 anskaffer ny nasjonal lagringsinfrastruktur

Migration of the data

The NIRD2020 project will be closed when the new system is set into production in February/March 2023. 

Now as the contract is signed, the main tasks of the project are to: 

• Install the system  
• Establish procedures 
• Migrate the data 
• Perform training 

This will be done by the Preparation for Operation Working Group.