DocumentationOverview
About e-INFRA CZ Onedata
What is Onedata?
Onedata is a global data management platform that lets you store, share, and access research data across distributed storage systems — regardless of where the physical storage is located. It presents data from multiple storage providers as a single, unified file system, making it easy to work with large datasets across institutions and borders.
In simple terms: Think of Onedata as a smart cloud storage system designed specifically for research — one that connects storage from multiple locations and lets you access it all from one place.
When to Use Onedata & Its Advantages
When is Onedata a Good Fit?
Onedata is well-suited for:
- Storing and sharing large research datasets that exceed the capacity of typical cloud storage (e.g., Google Drive, Dropbox)
- Collaborating with colleagues across different institutions or countries
- Archiving research outputs that need to be accessible long-term
- Processing data on HPC (High-Performance Computing) clusters — Onedata can be mounted directly as a file system
- Publishing datasets so others can access or cite your research data
Key Advantages
| Feature | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Unified access | Access all your data from one place, no matter where it’s physically stored |
| High capacity | Designed for large-scale scientific datasets |
| Flexible sharing | Share data with specific users, groups, or make it publicly accessible |
| Data locality transparency | See which storage provider holds your data |
| Multiple access methods | Web portal, desktop sync, command-line, REST API, FUSE mount |
| Security & access control | Fine-grained permissions for files and folders |
| Integration with HPC | Can be used directly with computing resources |
Not sure whether to use Onedata or S3? Here is a quick comparison.
Differences between the two:
| Onedata | S3 Storage | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Data management platform across a storage federation | Raw data storage |
| Storage type | Multiple backends with a unifying layer over them | Object storage |
| Access methods | POSIX FS, S3 API, REST API, CDMI API | S3 API only |
| Data location | Same data can live in multiple locations | Single data storage cluster |
| Other features | Permissions, groups, roles, replication, inter-site transfer | Tenant/bucket/object model, reliability |
When to use:
| Onedata |
|---|
| Unified interface across multiple storages. |
| Multiple access methods. |
| Integration of already existing storage. |
| Distributed / shared datasets, operations on data from different locations. |
| S3 Storage |
|---|
| Backup, archiving. |
| Fast access, big data. |
| No need for automatic migration, replication, sharing. |
| S3 API access is sufficient. |
Official documentation at Onedata docs.
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