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| Rocky Mountain Regional Data Center | |
|---|---|
| Name | Rocky Mountain Regional Data Center |
| Type | Research data center |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado |
| Region served | Rocky Mountains |
| Established | 2008 |
Rocky Mountain Regional Data Center
The Rocky Mountain Regional Data Center is a research-oriented data repository and computational hub serving institutions across the Rocky Mountains and Intermountain West. It supports scientific computing, data stewardship, and collaborative projects for universities, national laboratories, and agencies. The center coordinates storage, high-performance computing, and data curation for multidisciplinary initiatives spanning environmental science, atmospheric research, and geoscience.
The center functions as a regional node connecting universities such as University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado State University, University of Utah, and Montana State University with federal agencies like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, and Department of Energy. It integrates with national cyberinfrastructure efforts including XSEDE, Open Science Grid, Teragrid and partnerships with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The facility supports projects funded by institutions such as National Institutes of Health, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Environmental Protection Agency.
The initiative emerged from regional collaborations among the University of Colorado System, Colorado School of Mines, and state research offices following recommendations from workshops organized by NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering and the American Geophysical Union. Early funding rounds included awards from the National Science Foundation Directorate for Geosciences and cooperative agreements with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The center expanded after strategic planning influenced by models from Purdue University, Stanford University, and University of California, San Diego and adopted governance practices inspired by consortia such as Internet2 and CENIC.
The physical campus comprises a primary data hall near Denver International Airport and satellite nodes co-located at partner campuses including University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and University of Utah Health. Infrastructure includes redundant power systems similar to deployments at Google Data Centers and cooling solutions used by Microsoft Azure facilities. Networking is provisioned over regional backbones like Internet2, Esnet, and state research and education networks tied into Front Range GigaPop and InCommon. Storage arrays, tape archives, and object storage mirror technologies from EMC Corporation, NetApp, and Dell EMC and employ clustered filesystems used by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and CERN.
Operational offerings include high-performance computing clusters for modeling used in projects with NOAA National Weather Service, data archiving for observational networks such as National Ecological Observatory Network, and geospatial services aligned with US Geological Survey datasets. The center provides data management planning aligned with FAIR data principles and metadata standards modeled on Dublin Core, ISO 19115, and practices from Digital Curation Centre. User support interfaces interoperate with science gateways like Earth System Grid Federation, Apache Airflow, and JupyterHub. Training and outreach are conducted in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, and regional community colleges.
A governing board includes representatives from consortium members such as University of Colorado Denver, Colorado State University Pueblo, Utah State University, and state offices of technology. Funding streams combine competitive grants from National Science Foundation, cooperative agreements with Department of Energy Office of Science, cost-recovery contracts with National Park Service research units, and memberships by institutions following models like Consortium of Research Libraries. Financial oversight follows standards promoted by Council on Federal Financial Assistance, and audits align with practices from Office of Management and Budget guidance.
Security operations adhere to frameworks influenced by NIST Special Publication 800-53, FISMA requirements for federal partnerships, and best practices from Center for Internet Security benchmarks. Compliance covers handling of protected health information under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act when supporting clinical research at partner hospitals and aligns with data protection expectations from Department of Homeland Security collaborations. The center uses identity and access management federations like InCommon and logging and incident response modeled on US-CERT and CERT Coordination Center playbooks.
Partnerships span federal labs, academic centers, and non-profits including Rocky Mountain Research Station, Western Water Assessment, Nature Conservancy, and The Climate Corporation. The center enables interdisciplinary projects that inform policy deliberations at state legislatures and resource agencies such as Colorado Water Conservation Board and Utah Division of Water Resources, supports climate modeling contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and facilitates datasets used by programs like NOAA Climate Program Office. Through collaborations with consortia like DataONE and RDA (Research Data Alliance), the center advances reproducible research and helps integrate regional observational networks with national and international science infrastructures.
Category:Research data centers Category:Science and technology in Colorado Category:Academic consortiums