Overview: Research File Service

Principal Investigators (PIs) and researchers from any division are invited to request storage.   

There is one service request available to request access to RFS, which can be found in the IT Self Service Catalogue: please search for 'RFS'.

Via this service request, you can:

• Request new storage
• Add/remove users for your project
• Change your storage allocation
• Change the end date, or when RFS storage is required until
• Change RFS owners  
• Close a project down

Please ensure you discuss your research storage requirements with your local IT support team before requesting RFS storage, to ensure RFS is the most appropriate place for your research data. A decision tree has been created to help with this.  

Owners will receive a confirmation email that your RFS storage has been set up. Once you map your drive to \\connect.ox.ac.uk\RFS (instructions are in the RFS Owner Guide) you will see any projects you’ve been given access to. 

The second stage is to request access for users:  

• All RFS users sign in with Oxford Single Sign-On (SSO). Owners grant and remove access for users via the RFS self-service portal.

• If you are one of the named project owners and you do not already have an RFS account, your SSO-based access to RFS will be provisioned automatically when you first request storage (no separate request is required). We do ask that you name two owners, in case one leaves or is absent.

Owners of the storage will be able to add read/write access for users via the self-service portal.

Please note: owners must ensure that access is revoked promptly when staff or students no longer require access to the project data, for example due to leaving the University or changing roles. Owners must not rely on University card expiry for this purpose. 

PIs must ensure that all access permissions are reviewed on at least an annual basis. 

Automatic screen locking after a defined period of inactivity must be configured on any end-user device used to access the service, including any self-managed systems. Users should not rely solely on this to protect access to data, and should lock the screen manually or log out whenever leaving systems unattended.

To access RFS, you will need to ensure that your University card is in date, and that you can sign in with Oxford Single Sign-On (SSO).

If you are a user rather than an owner, your PI will also need to give you access to their RFS project using the RFS Self-Service Portal. Detailed instructions on how they can do this can be found in the RFS Owner Guide.  

Internal users can access RFS via an SMB share, signing in with Oxford SSO. External guest users can only access RFS via the web portal.

RFS is free at the point of service for researchers wanting to store up to 20TB of research data. For research projects that require larger volumes of data storage (>20TB), a yearly cost will be incurred. Additional storage can be purchased above the initial maximum free allocation of 20TB and will be charged on a per annum basis in blocks of 10TB (£2,795.10 per 10TB block, per annum). Should anyone be interested in discussing requirements for purchasing additional volumes of storage, please do get in touch via rfs-help@it.ox.ac.uk.

Anyone undertaking research at the University of Oxford can request storage for their research project on RFS, provided they require between 100GB and 20TB of storage. Requests for storage above 20TB will incur a cost, as stated in the RFS Pricing section above.  

Best practice for requesting storage is to assess how much space you require initially and request an appropriate allocation, which can later be increased using the service request in the IT Self Service Catalogue. Please only request RFS storage if you have data ready to add to the service.  Requests of 5TB or over will be assessed individually to determine your data storage needs and may take longer than usual to set up.  

When requesting RFS space, you are required to nominate two owners, one of which must be your PI. Storage owners are responsible for all data and user management on RFS, including auditing who has access to your project, and the offloading of data once it ceases to be live research data. Storage owners will be the first point of contact for any queries.

RFS allows storage owners to invite external (non-Oxford) guests to access storage space. More information on how to add external guests to your space can be found in the RFS Owner Guide.

The team aims to respond to requests within two working days.

Please refer to the guidance provided on this webpage in the first instance, and contact the Research Support Services team to discuss any further training needs.

Storage owners can add any user with Oxford SSO account to their project, using the RFS Self-Service Portal. Detailed instructions on adding users with SSO and managing access are in the RFS Owner Guide.

The minimum storage you can request is 100GB. The maximum available per project is 20TB. However, to enable the service to manage storage efficiently (and to facilitate offering a free tier to all), storage will be allocated on an as-needed basis.

Initial storage allocations will typically be up to 2TB. Exceptions can be made if substantial project data already exists: please contact the Research Support Services team if this applies to your project.

This allocation can be increased over time if needed. Once you are using over 50% of your storage allocation, you can ask for an increase by submitting an RFS service request via IT self-service. (If you are not yet using 50% of your allocation, but expect incoming data to take you over your current limit, please contact the Research Support Services team).

 Files or data in any format can be stored in RFS.

You can share your data with any internal research colleagues (within the University of Oxford) who have access to RFS through SMB. Internal colleagues sign in with SSO to access RFS. New users activate SSO as per University guidance. Access follows standard University account lifecycle policies.

RFS users should ensure they lock their screens or log off when leaving their PC unattended. It is the owners' responsibility to remove users who are longer working on their research project from RFS. This housekeeping should be undertaken periodically and at least annually.

The Information Security team have recommended that, as there is no multi-factor authentication for SMB, only public and internal (non-confidential) files are stored in RFS. 

Should RFS become a suitable solution for confidential data in the future, we will update our pages and communications to reflect this change. However, please be aware there are wider investigations ongoing at the University at present to explore improving the options available for researchers working with sensitive or confidential data.

As this is a secure system, you cannot share your data publicly from RFS.

Your data is encrypted and is backed up in RFS, utilising a combination of IT Services’ Private Cloud service and Veeam (as an industry leader for backups and disaster recovery). The retention period for these backups is 30 days. To recover a file or folder from a specific date in the last 30 days, please email rfs-help@it.ox.ac.uk with as much detail as you can give, and the RFS team will work with you to recover your files.

Additionally, as RFS lives on Windows servers, Windows shadow copies of files are taken at 9am, 12pm, and 3pm every day, replaced by a newer version of the file each day. Details of how to restore previous versions are provided in the RFS Owner Guide.

The shadow copy functionality is only available to users when accessing RFS via SMB on Windows, and is not available on the web portal, Linux, or MacOS (for these users, please email rfs-help@it.ox.ac.uk as detailed above).

Data should be removed prior to the end date of the project, as your access will be revoked on that date. Any data remaining after that date is liable to be deleted by the RFS team. Please plan well ahead of time and talk to rfs-help@it.ox.ac.uk if necessary. 

Other storage is more suitable for archives: details can be found on Research Data Oxford's Post-project data preservation page. 

You can request storage for as long as your research project will need it. You will be asked to state an end date when requesting your storage, but you can always change this end date via the RFS service request from the IT Self Service Catalogue.

RFS is the reliable, resilient, secure, scalable and accessible University-approved central storage facility for all active non-confidential data, which is accessed regularly. Data is only visible and / or editable by identified collaborators and is not accessible by the public. Data is held at project level, within folders. RFS offers an alternative to local storage options for up to 20TB of active research data per project. Once the project is completed, data from RFS can be moved to one of the University’s archive services, or a funder-prescribed archive.

The Data Pathfinder tool provides a guide to other research-related storage options, including the Sustainable Digital Scholarship (SDS) and the Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) service. A summary is also available on the Storing your files page.