Ontario Library Research Cloud: From Idea to Infrastructure in Three Easy Years

Abstract

The members of the Ontario Council of University Libraries required a viable and affordable offsite storage solution for their preservation programs. Existing options may have solved the needs in the short term, while creating myriad potential cost and jurisdictional issues down the road. The Ontario Library Research Cloud (OLRC) that we developed to address our needs is a geographically distributed 1.25 PB storage and computing network jointly developed by 11 of Ontario’s university libraries. The OLRC went into production in October 2015, with the development focus now shifting to the direct integration of repository applications with the OpenStack Swift storage. As the OLRC moves toward maturity, questions remain concerning both long-term costs as well as how to sensibly use and manage the computing capabilities offered by the infrastructure as it was built to support digital scholarship in Ontario. This presentation outlines what we propose is a replicable model for others looking to build massive shared solutions as well as seek input and commentary on both our cost and operational models.