Victor Dudarev, Alfred Ludwig
The accumulation, management, and processing of research data require a robust and sustainable IT infrastructure that can flexibly adapt to evolving scientific requirements and heterogeneous data types. At the same time, such an infrastructure must ensure reliable long-term operation in compliance with the requirements of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the generally accepted FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).
Within CRC/TRR 247, the INF project therefore focuses on establishing and maintaining a dedicated software and hardware infrastructure that supports continuous research data management, ensures data integrity and availability, and provides sufficient redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities.
During the first funding period of CRC/TRR 247, no dedicated INF project existed. At that time, research data management was based on a Django-based RDMS hosted on a virtual machine at the University of Duisburg–Essen (UDE). In autumn 2022, this system became unavailable following a successful cyberattack on the IT infrastructure of UDE and was effectively lost (see, e.g., contemporary reports in the press 1, 2).
Only after nearly one year and repeated requests, the IT service of UDE was able to provide files of the virtual machine that had been damaged as a result of the attack (see screenshot of the e-mail dated 08.11.2023).
Even though the image was damaged and the virtual machine did not boot due to operating system corruption, through the concerted efforts of the INF project, it was possible to extract the most recent state of the research databases and associated documents as they existed at the time of the attack. The recovered information was fully restored and subsequently migrated to the MatInf system, which was already under active development and operation by the INF project on its own dedicated infrastructure.
This incident highlighted several critical lessons that directly informed the design and implementation of the current infrastructure:
Against this background, the INF project pursues the goal of sustainable development and efficient long-term operation of a robust research data infrastructure for CRC/TRR 247. The concrete implementation of this strategy is described in the following sections of this report.
In accordance with the second funding period (FP2) proposal, a dedicated hardware infrastructure has been established and continuously expanded during FP2 in order to ensure infrastructural flexibility for the development, operation, and maintenance of information systems for research data acquisition, processing, and storage.
All core components are based on enterprise-grade server hardware provided by DELL and are operated within data centers of Ruhr University Bochum (RUB).
The central component of the infrastructure is a 2-unit DELL PowerEdge R750 server, acquired at the end of 2022 and installed in the IC Ost server room. The system is primarily used to host virtual machines supporting the core data infrastructure of CRC/TRR 247. Disk storage capacity has been expanded in subsequent years in response to increasing data volumes.
The server runs a Hyper-V hypervisor and hosts, in particular, a virtual machine that ensures the continuous 24/7 operation of the web-based Research Data Management System (RDMS) of CRC/TRR 247, including all associated services: crc247.mdi.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
This system represents the primary operational backbone of the INF data infrastructure.
Current hardware configuration (DELL PowerEdge R750):
- 2 × Intel Xeon Gold 6326 CPUs (16 cores each, 2.90 GHz)
- 512 GB DDR4 RAM (3200 MHz)
- BOSS controller, RAID 1: 240 GB SATA SSD (2 × M.2 Micron 240 GB)
- PERC H755 controller with:
• RAID 1: 3.6 TB SATA SSD (2 × 2.5" SKhynix 3.6 TB)
• RAID 5: 44 TB SATA HDD (4 × 3.5" Seagate 16 TB)
• RAID 5: 110 TB SATA HDD (6 × 3.5" WD Gold 24 TB)
- 2 × 10 Gbit LAN
- iDRAC 9
- Host operating system: Windows Server 2022 Standard
For additional local redundancy, an external WD My Book Duo USB storage device is directly connected to the main server. This device is used exclusively for storing backup copies of databases and research data and provides an additional protection layer independent of the internal disk subsystems of the server.
Current hardware configuration (WD My Book Duo):
22 TB (RAID 0: 2 × 11 TB)
To ensure disaster resilience and geographical redundancy, a dedicated backup server (DELL PowerEdge R6615, 1 unit) was acquired at the end of 2023. The system is located in the central RUB data center and operates in a different IP subnet and physical environment than the main server. Storage capacity and main memory have been expanded in subsequent years.
The physical separation of the backup server from the main infrastructure ensures that, in the event of a complete failure or loss of the primary data center, essential services and data can be restored and put into operation using the backup infrastructure.
Current hardware configuration (DELL PowerEdge R6615):
- 1 × AMD EPYC 9124 CPU (16 cores, 3.0 GHz) - 320 GB DDR5 RAM (4800 MHz; 4 × 16 GB + 4 × 64 GB Micron) - BOSS controller, RAID 1: 480 GB SATA SSD (2 × M.2 SKhynix 480 GB) - RAID 5: 60 TB SATA HDD (4 × 3.5" WDC 22 TB) - 2 × 10 Gbit LAN - iDRAC 9 - Host operating system: Windows Server 2022 Standard
In order to support computationally intensive research tasks, a 2-unit DELL PowerEdge R770 compute server was acquired at the end of 2025 and installed in the IC Ost server room. The system includes an NVIDIA H100 NVL accelerator and is intended for advanced numerical simulations and data-driven research.
Typical use cases include:
The acquisition of the required software licenses is planned to be financed from INF project funds in the first half of 2026.
Current hardware configuration (DELL PowerEdge R770):
- 2 × Intel Xeon 6515P CPUs (16 cores each, 2.3 GHz)
- 256 GB DDR5 RAM (6400 MHz; 16 × Hynix 16 GB)
- BOSS controller, RAID 1: 480 GB SATA SSD (2 × M.2 Micron 480 GB)
- 1.92 TB NVMe SSD (Samsung)
- NVIDIA H100 NVL GPU (94 GB HBM)
- 2 × 10 Gbit LAN
- iDRAC 10
- Operating systems:
• Windows Server 2025 Standard (180-day trial; license purchase planned for Q1 2026)
• Linux Mint 22.2
High operational reliability is ensured through multiple layers of hardware redundancy and monitoring:
All infrastructure components are operated within secure data centers of Ruhr University Bochum and are distributed across two geographically separated locations:
This deployment strategy provides both physical security and resilience against site-specific failures.
To ensure long-term data preservation and operational continuity, a multi-stage, automated backup strategy has been implemented. This strategy ensures the existence of multiple, temporally and geographically distributed backup copies.
On the main virtual machine (WebVM) hosted on the main server (see Section 1.1), automated backup tasks are executed via the Windows Task Scheduler and dedicated scripts:
The path \\host.mdi.ruhr-uni-bochum.de\Shared_Backup resides on the external backup storage connected to the main server (see Section 1.2).
As a result, an up-to-date copy of both databases and research documents is always available on an independent storage medium, even in the event of a complete failure of the main server.
The backup server (Section 1.3) performs a weekly synchronization every Sunday at 11:00, copying the entire directory \\host.mdi.ruhr-uni-bochum.de\Shared_Backup from the external storage to the local directory E:\Shared_Backup on the backup server, which is itself based on a RAID 5 storage system.
If this synchronization fails, an automatic email notification is sent to the system administrators. The incident is then analyzed using the corresponding task logs, ensuring traceability and timely remediation.
In addition to automated backups of databases and documents, a full manual backup of the main virtual machine image hosted on the main server (see Section 1.1) is performed approximately twice per year. The VM image is copied both to the external disk (see Section 1.2) and to the backup server (see Section 1.3).
Since the backup server operates an active Hyper-V role and hosts a preconfigured virtual machine environment, the entire system can be restored and brought back into operation even in the event of a complete loss of the infrastructure located in the IC Ost data center.
During FP2 of CRC/TRR 247, a dedicated, robust, and scalable software and hardware infrastructure has been successfully established within the INF project. This infrastructure ensures:
As a result, the infrastructure provides a sustainable foundation for research data management within CRC/TRR 247 and supports the long-term continuity and integrity of data-driven research activities.
Last updated on 08.01.2026