Digital Research
alliancecan.ca · 2 records in Compute, Storage · JSON
Records 2
- caveatDigital Research Alliance of Canada — 1 TB default object storage per project, up to 40 TB project / 100 TB nearline via Rapid Access Service
Storagefree tieridentity institutionno cardlimit write-gatedevidence reportedstale on 2026-11-05
- fails: identityDigital Research Alliance
Computeidentity emailno cardevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-22
- Free allowance
- 'All Arbutus projects are allocated a default 1TB of object storage.
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- institutionno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- write-gatedapplication, up to a maximum of 40 TB of project storage and 100 TB of nearline storage', w
- Evidence
- reported7 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | 'All Arbutus projects are allocated a default 1TB of object storage. If more is required, you can either request an additional 9TB available through our Rapid Access Service. More than 10TB must be requested and allocated under the annual Resource Allocation Competition.' The RAS policy adds: PIs 'can request additional storage resources in any General Purpose cluster without submitting a RAC application, up to a maximum of 40 TB of project storage and 100 TB of nearline storage', with the total across all clusters capped at those numbers. unit TB; metered on stored-bytes |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
per-object-cap: not documented for Arbutus. Retention: object storage is not backed up — 'management of a project's object storage containers is self-service. This includes operations such as backups because the object store itself is not backed up.' request-rate: not published. Gate: CCDB account (institutional), and storage above 10 TB requires an email to support@tech.alliancecan.ca from a PI. |
| Identity | institution an account is registered on the CCDB portal. The Principal Investigator role that requests the storage is an academic PI: a full- or part-time faculty member, an adjunct faculty member, or a librarian at a Canadian university, college or research hospital eligible to hold Canada Foundation for Innovation grants; a lead researcher at an eligible Canadian research institute is the second route, and industry, non-profit and government researchers apply for paid access through a regional organisation. A sponsored user needs no affiliation of their own but 'require a sponsor to create an account on CCDB'. No card and no phone number is asked for. |
| Egress | Not metered in any doc; OpenStack Swift/S3 serve objects over HTTPS and buckets can be made public. |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | s3, rclone, cli s3 |
| Tooling | OpenStack Swift or S3 against the Arbutus object store; rclone/swift/s3cmd all work. 'We offer access to the OpenStack Object Store via two different protocols: Swift or Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). ... object storage containers and objects created with Swift or S3 can be accessed using both protocols.' |
| Composes with | 1 TB automatic + 9 TB RAS + up to 40 TB project storage per PI by email request. Multiple PIs/institutions each get their own; there is also a separate nearline (HPSS/tape) ceiling of 100 TB. |
| Reliability | Not backed up and self-managed; the docs are Anubis-protected (proof-of-work challenge) which also means scraping the current page fails and you must read the archived copy. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 7
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | docs.alliancecan.ca/wiki/Arbutus_object_storage | captured 2024-09-14 via Wayback: 'All Arbutus projects are allocated a default 1TB of object storage... request an additional 9TB available through our Rapid Access Service. More than 10TB must be requested and allocated under the annual Resource Allocation Competition.' |
| 2026-10-21 | ualberta-rcg.github.io/ragflow-wiki-data/base/policies/rapid | 'up to a maximum of 40 TB of project storage and 100 TB of nearline storage. These resources can be requested all in one cluster or split across multiple ones, but the total amount across all clusters must not exceed 40 TB of project storage or 100 TB of nearline storage.' |
| 2026-10-21 | source not published | firecrawl provider -> returns the Wikipedia language-list boilerplate; Wayback capture of the same URL -> also Anubis 'Sad Anubis / Access Denied'. Documented as a challenge-walled host; numbers above come from the 2024-09-14 capture, which predates the wall. |
| 2026-10-21 | arbutus.cloud.computecanada.ca/ | probe: curl -> 302 (host alive, redirects to auth) |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.alliancecan.ca/wiki/User_roles_to_access_resources_and_ | an account outside that affiliation exists only as a sponsored user of a PI, so the identity is still an institution |
| 2026-11-01 | alliancecan.ca/en/services/advanced-research-computing/acces | access to a system is a separate request after the account, by the PI and each sponsored user |
| 2026-11-01 | ccdb.alliancecan.ca/account_application | the CCDB registration form is an agreements screen, and the allocation is a separate request |
Unknown values 4
- per object cap notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- per object cap stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
Digital Research Alliance
Compute- Free allowance
- Canada's national platform ran about 233,000 CPU cores, 62,000 virtual CPUs, 2,610 GPUs and 150 PB of storage across Cedar, Graham, Niagara, Beluga and Arbutus.
- Verdict
- fails: identitythe identity required is not reachable without it
- Cost
- not stated
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- noneno named constraint binds
- Evidence
- documented4 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-22checked 2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-22
| Free tier | Canada's national platform ran about 233,000 CPU cores, 62,000 virtual CPUs, 2,610 GPUs and 150 PB of storage across Cedar, Graham, Niagara, Beluga and Arbutus. It reserves "a target of 20% for researchers to use through the Rapid Access Service (RAS), which grants all users access to modest quantities of compute, storage and cloud resources as soon as they have a Compute Canada account", against 80% allocated competitively. unit none; metered on wall-clock; kind not stated |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Binding | none no binding constraint identified |
| Identity | email not published |
| Egress | not stated |
| Interface | rest inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed |
| Tooling | not stated |
| Composes with | not established |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Notes | no open question recorded |
Evidence 4
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | alliancecan.ca/en/services/advanced-research-computing/resea | "approximately 233,000 CPU cores, 62,000 virtual CPUs, 2,610 GPUs and 150 PB of storage on Cedar [...] Graham [...] Niagara [...] Beluga [...] and Arbutus", quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | alliancecan.ca/en/services/advanced-research-computing/resea | "the CCF reserves a target of 20% for researchers to use through the Rapid Access Service (RAS), which grants all users access to modest quantities of compute, storage and cloud resources as soon as they have a Compute Canada account", quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | www.uoguelph.ca/research/alerts/content/digital-research-all | to apply to a Resource Allocation Competition, PIs and Co-PIs must "be a faculty member at a Canadian academic institution" and "have an active Alliance account with an Academic Principal Investigator role", quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | alliancecan.ca/en/services/advanced-research-computing/resea | the 2021 competition awarded 40 percent of CPU core years requested, 90 percent of storage and 22 percent of GPUs requested, quoted |
More fields 1
| facets | {"class": null,"free_tier_kind": null,"shape": null} |
|---|
Unknown values 6
- egress metered: egress metering was not published
- egress terms: a source was read and is silent on this field
- per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
- retention stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- tooling: a source was read and is silent on this field