Ribbon-cutting ceremony for Idaho State University’s Research Data Center set for Aug. 16

According to Keith Weber, director of ISU’s GIS Training and Research Center, the RDC will be invaluable to ISU’s research community.“In today’s research world, so much of the research and analysis we do is on computers,” Weber said. “The problem often faced by a researcher is the computers available to them are too slow or too small.”

Weber said the RDC solves both of these shortcomings by providing state-of-the-art computer servers that have the ability to perform calculations very quickly and handle terabytes of research data.

“This is a fantastic resource to all of ISU’s research community that simply wasn’t available prior to the RDC,” he said.

The computers housed in the RDC are state-of-the-art servers and virtual machines with one terabyte of random access memory (RAM) and close to 100 terabytes of disk space. Furthermore, dozens of additional research servers are slated to move into the RDC later this fall.

The center’s computers will be freely accessible to ISU’s entire research community including students, faculty and staff. Interested participants can submit their requests and prepare to use the facilities now. Users will then be given a virtual server to access the Research Data Center, similar to cloud computing.

“The RDC was merely a pipe dream five or 10 years ago,” Weber said. “However, Dr. Neels Van der Schyf, ISU vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School, shared the vision of myself and other research scientists at ISU and was instrumental in bringing the RDC concept to fruition.”

Since the RDC plan was approved, the Office for Research, Information Technology Services, NetCom, and the ISU research community have been working on the project for over two years.

For more information on the Research Data Center, contact Keith Weber at webekeit@isu.edu or (208) 282-2757.