From Bench to Archive: Practical Data Management

This talk gives researchers and IT staff a roadmap for managing research data across its full lifecycle — from collection and active analysis to long‑term archiving. It covers core questions about ownership, sharing, and access, explains the difference between backup and archive workflows, and clarifies institutional roles and responsibilities. Practical guidance includes where to store data (local institute storage like Ceph/ZFS pools vs. storage at MPCDF), how to prepare datasets for transfer and archiving (pack large numbers of small files into compressed TAR/ZIP containers), and strategies for ingesting data from field drives and high‑performance compute requests. The presentation also addresses collaboration with external services such as MPCDF and GWDG, archive size and packaging constraints, and the use of IBM TSM for archival and backup operations. Operational best practices cover directory layout, metadata and documentation standards (FAIR principles), retention policies (minimum retention periods), and user education to avoid storing private or non‑research content on shared systems. The session closes with a checklist and templates for a Data Management Plan, concrete next steps for implementing rules and controls, and pointers to institutional contacts and resources.