This page provides the necessary information for requesting, managing data storage allocations, and billing.  It is essential that you review the Storage Billing FAQ and Data Storage Service pages.  Below we provide information on the three different software applications we use to help PIs (Coldfront), Finance managers (FIINE), and Lab/Data managers (Starfish) perform their roles.

To get more information about the storage tiers and their features please visit storage tiers on our data-storage services page. Please feel free to reach out to us at  rchelp@rc.fas.harvard.edu with any questions.

STORAGE TIERS and COST

Important notes:

• We do mostly billing using FIINE and following the document below to get access to FIINE
• Billing is done monthly.
• The cutoff day for billing is the 15th of each month. Any changes done to the allocation will be reflected in next month’s bill.
• The service center needs 33 digit billing code to provide the service. It’s an internal service so we can’t create POs for billing.
• For billing questions and queries email billing@rc.fas.harvard.edu

REQUEST OR MANAGE AN ALLOCATION

NEW TIERED ALLOCATIONS

If you do not have a tiered storage allocation and project already in Coldfront, you can request a new storage allocation via the portal

• Portal Storage Request Form

EXISTING COLDFRONT TIERED ALLOCATION PROJECTS

If you have an existing project in Coldfront, you can manage your allocations there:

• To request an additional allocation or manage an existing one, you will use Coldfront
• If you have an existing allocation and cannot access Coldfront, please contacts FASRC

MANAGE BILLING FOR ALLOCATIONS

Charges for storage allocations are billed monthly. Expense code(s) can be applied to each allocation and can be sub-divided among multiple billing codes.
See our Service Center FAQ for answers to common questions.

To manage billing for an existing allocation, you will need:

• A FASRC account. You very likely already have this unless you are a new PI.
  If you do not have an account, please view: How Do I Get a FAS Research Computing Account?
• Access to the FIINE billing system.
  • PLEASE NOTE: If you have an account that was created before ~ 2021 and cannot log into FIINE, you likely need to  go through the Informatics onboarding tool to get your Harvard Key information updated in our system. https://onboard.rc.fas.harvard.edu/onboard/

Instructions for expense code management and billing record review in FIINE are available at:
https://ifx.rc.fas.harvard.edu/docs/user/fiine.html

Starfish – Data Management

Starfish – Scans the different storage servers to provide a view, usage details, metadata, and tagging based on the projects. Check here for more details about starfish and examples to query the data.

Coldfront – Lab and Allocation management:

Coldfront – Provides a view on PI projects and allocations. New allocation and updates to existing allocation can be requested using Coldfront. Check here for more details about Coldfront and its use.

Fiine -FAS Instrument Invoicing Environment

Fiine – For lab/finance administrator to manage the expense codes per project/user and view invoices. Check here for more information about using the Fiine system.