We host a variety of options and provide storage recommendations to help researchers effectively store, share, and protect important information within the Microbiology and Immunology Department.
Note on third-party cloud services. Services such as Dropbox and Google Drive (GSuite) may require a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) depending on usage and data stored. Members are generally discouraged from using these providers as they may infringe on BC privacy laws (FIPPA). The services listed below meet UBC Information Security Standards requirements, and in some cases FIPPA requirements.
Available services
National research options
Microsoft options
- Microsoft OneDrive (Windows & macOS)
- Microsoft Teams (Windows & macOS)
Self-managed options (including free/open source)
- Duplicati (Windows, macOS & Linux)
- Time Machine Self-Managed Backups (macOS)
UBC IT options
National research options
Digital Research Alliance of Canada Storage
Every researcher within the Microbiology and Immunology Department is advised to have a Digital Research Alliance of Canada account. Each account comes with a default allocation across several storage tiers:
- Home Space — 50 GB and 500K files per user
- Scratch Space — 20 TB and 1M files per user
- Project Space — 1 TB and 500K files per group
- Nearline Space — 2 TB and 5K files per group
Learn more about Digital Research Alliance of Canada — Storage and File Management →
Globus File Transfer
Globus is a fast, reliable, high-performance service for secure data movement, designed specifically for researchers. It provides an easy-to-use interface with background monitoring and automates file transfers between any two resources — whether between two Alliance resources or between WestGrid and another machine such as a campus cluster, lab server, or desktop.
Globus leverages GridFTP for its transfer protocol while shielding users from complex setup tasks. It auto-tunes transfers for optimal performance; users have reported 10× to 100× improvements over methods such as SCP.
Microsoft options
Microsoft OneDrive
OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage service available to all UBC staff and faculty through the university’s Microsoft 365 subscription. It integrates directly with Windows and macOS for seamless file sync and access.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams provides collaborative file storage alongside its communication features. Files shared within Teams are stored in SharePoint and are accessible to all team members.
Self-managed options
Duplicati
Duplicati is a free, open-source backup application that supports encrypted, incremental backups to a wide range of destinations including local drives, network shares, and cloud storage providers. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and can be configured to run on a schedule automatically.
Time Machine Self-Managed Backups
Time Machine is the built-in backup feature of macOS and works with an external drive connected to your Mac. Once configured, it automatically backs up your entire system — including applications, accounts, preferences, email, and documents — without any ongoing manual effort.
Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups until the drive is full, giving you the ability to restore your Mac to any previous point in time.
UBC IT options
UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC) – Chinook Object Storage
Chinook is UBC ARC’s object storage platform, available to UBC researchers by application. With an initial 5 PB of capacity, it is designed for storing and retrieving large research datasets — including short- or medium-term archives, aggregated results, copies of valuable datasets, and staged reference data.
Chinook integrates with UBC ARC Sockeye (UBC’s HPC cluster) for fast data transfer to the compute platform. Storage is accessed via Globus for data transfer and sharing.
UBC IT Home Drive Service
Home Drive is a UBC IT-provided private cloud storage service for securely storing personal files at no cost. Access is limited to UBC employees with an EAD account. This service is not intended for file sharing — if you need to share content with colleagues, files must be copied to an alternate location such as TeamShare.