Historically the Department of Biochemistry has provided extensive file storage and backup services to faculty labs, facilities and relevant support staff groups. Over the years, our department-supported equipment has required upgrades or adoption of newer technology. The department currently utilizes a fully DoIT provided storage solution.

Utilizing the DoIT provided service requires an ongoing monthly financial commitment from the department. The DoIT provided solution includes an initial offering (July 2023) of 25 TB of storage at no upfront cost to each faculty member or permanent PI and offers the ability to purchase additional individual space if needed. Biochemistry utilizes this this service to help reduce our local cost of providing file storage services.

The policy below, endorsed by the Department IT/Media Committee outlines our plan to provide, if needed, extra financial support for supplemental storage services to Biochemistry PIs (aka: lab units), while ensuring departmental costs and required personnel efforts are kept at reasonable, sustainable and maintainable levels. This policy allows each PI's lab to increase storage in ~8 TB increments to a total capacity of ~66 TB (based on rates as of 7/1/2023) at no cost to the lab.

Policy

The Department of Biochemistry, in collaboration with DoIT, will finance the supplemental charges for additional storage above and beyond the campus provided storage, provided the following criteria are met...​​​

• Supplements are only provided on behalf of a Biochemistry PI. Affiliates, honorary appointments, and other collaborators may purchase additional storage but only by using their own funding sources.
• Only University of Wisconsin related data is to be stored on provided storage (initial or supplemental).
• Data should be actively managed to keep space utilization to a minimum:
  • Avoid data duplication.
  • Avoid personal (non-University of Wisconsin) file storage.
  • Avoid storage of data that can easily be retrieved elsewhere.
  • Old data should be compressed if it is still needed but not actively in use. But do not delete data that is required to be archived by UW Policies!
• As needed, additional storage will be allocated in increments of $1,000 per PI, per year.
• The maximum supplemental storage cost provided by the department will not exceed $5,000 per PI, per year.
• Each incremental increase will require approval from Biochemistry IT Staff, who will verify the required efficiency of data management practices.
• Appeals or exceptions to this policy, will be considered by the IT/Media Committee and must be approved by the department chair.
• PI's may purchase any amount of additional storage above and beyond the departmentally funded levels using their own funding sources