Data, cloud and computing services
Data, cloud and computing services
Monash offers a range of data and cloud solutions to meet the needs of staff. Find the best service to meet your needs.
Monash has four levels of data classification, from public to very sensitive.
Researchers can use the research data solutions tool to find the most appropriate data solution.
Google Drive and Google shared drive
Sensitivity: Public, Restricted, Sensitive
S Drive
Sensitivity: Public, Restricted, Sensitive, Very sensitive
Purpose: For long-term storage.
- Managed by eSolutions
- Files stored securely on Monash storage infrastructure
- Automatic snapshot with self-serve file restore option
- VPN required when offsite
- Restricted access options
- External accounts can be set up for collaborator access
M Drive (data sharing and collaboration)
Sensitivity: Public, Restricted, Sensitive, Very sensitive
Purpose: Short-term storage, designed to securely send and receive data from external collaborators.
- Managed by eSolutions
- Files stored securely on Monash storage infrastructure
- ISO 27001 Certified platform
- MFA verification
- Secure file transfers to/from external collaborators
- Restricted access options
- Encryption-at-Rest
- Desktop or browser access
- Storage or transfers above 1TB require approval from eSolutions
P Drive
Sensitivity: Very sensitive
Purpose: For storage of very sensitive data (such as PII) and long-term storage for compliance reasons.
- Access via MoVE SDE environment
- Antivirus scanning
- Auditing
- Encryption-at-Rest
RDS Market (disk storage)
Sensitivity: Public, Restricted
Purpose: Storage for actively used data
- Managed by eResearch
- Files stored securely on Monash storage infrastructure
- Automatically backed up by the University
- Monash VPN required when off-site
- Restricted access options
- External accounts are available for collaborator access
- Market Storage Wiki
Request access: merc-rdsm-support@monash.edu
RDS Vault (hybrid disk and tape storage)
Sensitivity: Public, Restricted
Purpose: Long-term storage, backups and archiving
- Managed by eResearch
- Files stored securely on Monash storage infrastructure
- Automatically backed up by the University
- Monash VPN required when off-site
- Restricted access options
- External accounts are available for collaborator access
- Vault Storage Wiki
Request access: merc-rdsm-support@monash.edu
RDS Object Storage (disk storage and cloud-native API)
Sensitivity: Public, Restricted
Purpose: Unstructured data storage for cloud-native applications and analytics, etc
- Managed by eResearch
- Files stored securely on Monash storage infrastructure
- Automatic backups are not provided by the University
- Restricted access options
- External accounts are available for collaborator access
- Object Storage Wiki
Request access: merc-rdsm-support@monash.edu
RDS Nectar Volume (computational disk storage)
Sensitivity: Public, Restricted
Purpose: Storage used by eResearch virtual machines (VMs)
- Managed by eResearch
- Files stored securely on Monash storage infrastructure
- Automatic backups are not provided by the University
- Restricted access options
- External accounts are available for collaborator access
Request access: merc-rdsm-support@monash.edu
Monash Private Cloud (MPC)
The Monash Private Cloud (MPC) is a hosting platform available to all Monash staff. Users can request an SOE Windows or Linux environment. The MPC isn’t a self-service so researchers will need to specify their computing and storage requirements.
AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive and widely used cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It offers a vast array of services that cater to various computing needs, allowing businesses and individuals to access computing resources, storage, and other functionalities without the need to invest in and maintain their own physical infrastructure.The cost of this service is passed on to the customer.
AWS Secure Monash Landing Zone: A landing zone is a well-architected, multi-account AWS environment that is a starting point from which you can deploy workloads and applications. It provides a baseline to get started with multi-account architecture, identity and access management, governance, data security, network design and logging.
- Monash File Exchange: A secure managed SFTP based file/object transfer point hosted in AWS leveraging AWS Transfer Family and AWS S3.
Monash Azure Cloud Environment (MACE)
MACE is an Azure Services product designed, managed and provisioned for Monash University customers to innovate and create solutions. The cost of this service is passed on to the researcher, but it's possible to set a spend limit upfront
MASSIVE M3
MASSIVE is an Australian specialised HPC facility for imaging and visualisation. It’s particularly effective at data processing and image processing/analysis, as well as interactive visualisation, modelling and simulations. It is also well-suited to solving Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) parallelisation and large-scale visualisation problems that require multiple nodes for rendering.
Request access: help@massive.org.au
MonARCH
MonARCH is the University’s internal HPC system. Available to all Monash researchers and their collaborators, MonARCH is suitable for small to medium-scale workloads. Through the use of MonARCH, research students develop their HPC skills, which they can use on larger facilities, like NCI NF and Pawsey.
Request access: mcc-help@monash.edu
NCI/Pawsey
The NCI NF and Pawsey are Australia’s largest Tier-1 High Performance Computing centres. The most common form of access is from once-yearly grants from the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme. Researchers needing access to large HPC resources are invited to contact Monash eResearch for further information and options
Nectar Research Cloud
Monash operates a node of the Nectar (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources) research cloud. Nectar provides self-service computing and storage infrastructure to Australian researchers, and allows users to create VMs (Virtual Machines) which can be used to support various user-defined services. VMs can also be created and used as clusters in order to support HPC and parallel processing.
Request a project via the Nectar Dashboard
Secure Enclaves
Monash Secure Data Enclaves (SDE) is a software-defined, secure, and centralised private cloud infrastructure that aims to give Monash enterprise users and researchers a safe environment to host, process, store and analyse their sensitive data. The platform has been designed and built with security as one of its main objectives.
The platform aims to strike the right balance between achieving state-of-the-art security controls while maintaining the appropriate ease-of-use. The platform architecture and design enable the operating team to offer each workload its dedicated enclave with well-defined and monitored traffic routes to ensure that only authorised access is allowed.
The platform offers capabilities such as:
- software-defined micro-segmentation and network virtualisation
- encryption-at-rest with FIPS 140-2, Level 3 Encryption Key Management and Hardware Security Module
- full storage auditing capabilities
- advanced GPU virtualisation to support machine learning and data science workloads
- software-defined encrypted image-based backup for the hosted application with customisable retention period and frequency
- software-defined encrypted tape backup for the data hosted by the platform with customisable retention period and frequency
- advanced monitoring and real-time alerting through integration with Splunk
- automated batching and vulnerability scanning for the hosted applications
- secure long-term storage offered on the P:Drive.
Monash SeRP
Monash Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP) is a secure environment for sharing research data for collaboration and analysis, within the control and governance of the data custodian. Monash SeRP allows the Data custodian or the delegated project manager (Data Custodian) to have visibility and control over how their data is being used by other approved researchers.
Monash REDCap
REDCap is a secure, web-based application to create and manage research databases and/or participant surveys. It is developed to help researchers collect and manage sensitive data effectively and responsibly. REDCap's streamlined process for rapidly creating and designing projects offers a vast array of tools that can be tailored to virtually any data collection strategy.
REDCap provides automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to Excel and common statistical packages (SPSS, SAS, Stata, R), as well as a built-in project calendar, a scheduling module, ad hoc reporting tools, and advanced features, such as branching logic, file uploading, and calculated fields.
Data collected through REDCap will be directly and permanently stored on infrastructure located in Australia and managed by Helix. Data stored on this infrastructure is backed up daily. All traffic between the data collector’s personal device, the web server(s), the database server(s), and the file server(s) is encrypted.