ZIMT expands storage space for employees
The Center for Information and Media Technology (ZIMT) at the University of Siegen is now offering significantly more storage space for employees. A new Network Attached Storage (NAS) system significantly expands both personal network drives for individuals and group drives, for example for project teams or Executive Departments. The renewal of the existing system at the University of Siegen was made possible by financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the amount of 1.65 million euros.
Storage sizes at a glance
Following the provision of the new hardware in 2024 and the data migration of the ZIMT services last year, all user data from the network drives was transferred to the renewed NAS system in 2025.
Personal drives for individuals were automatically increased from 20 to 100 gigabytes, while group and function drives now have 500 instead of 100 gigabytes of storage space as standard. Both versions can be requested and used free of charge via the ZIMT website. Teams that require larger storage capacities can apply for extended group drives - a fee of 30 euros per semester is charged for each terabyte of storage space started. For particularly large projects, ZIMT recommends prior consultation in order to find the optimal storage solution for each group.
ZIMT now has a total of around 2.8 petabytes of NAS storage available for storing and backing up user data. Thanks to the system's modern scale-out architecture, the storage capacity can now be flexibly expanded - allowing the available space and performance to be adapted to increasing demand at short notice. "With the additional storage space, we are responding specifically to the needs of our employees and want to support teaching, research and administration in this way. In recent years in particular, a lot of work has become more data-intensive and requires sufficient and secure storage space," explains Stefan Junk from ZIMT.
Reliability through use of the INCYTE building
In the current system, the data is distributed across a total of 406 hard disks on 29 servers, which are located at two different sites - this means that the data is protected without interruption against the failure of several hard disks or even entire server systems. The INCYTE building serves as the new second location - replications of all data will be stored there from now on. This serves as a precaution in the event of a disaster, in which the data center (NDC building) on the Hölderlinstraße campus could fail as the main location, or also for the temporary relocation of the system for maintenance purposes.
Protection for sensitive data
Local storage on servers is also used to securely store sensitive research and administrative data that must not leave the university. It is not usually necessary for staff to back up data, as the new NAS system creates restore points for accidentally or maliciously deleted data in addition to replicating all data as standard.
Access to the storage remains unchanged: Employees can log on to their group or individual drives as usual via the university network or via a VPN connection.
If you have any questions about the storage services, please contact the ZIMT support desk by e-mail
is at your disposal. Further information on applying for the drives can be found on the ZIMT website.
