Congratulations BayernShare:10 years of FAUbox and Sync+Share
Technologie:Network
Some topics and ideas for services are being discussed everywhere: Between 2013 and 2014, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) and the Regional Computing Centre Erlangen (RRZE) investigated cloud storage and file sharing services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft's OneDrive, to find alternatives that comply with data protection regulations and can secure data in Bavaria or Germany, while also enabling mobile working. Coincidentally, after conducting market analyses, the computing centres independently added the PowerFolder software from Monheim-based startup dal33t to their list of potential providers, and it ultimately won them over. Following internal testing and adjustments, Sync+Share and FAUbox were made available to students and researchers in Munich, Nuremberg, and Erlangen from autumn 2015 onwards for securely exchanging large files that could not be sent via email.
FAUbox for the CIO office
Dr. Monica Hinrichs-Mayer keeps a constant eye on around 60 folders in FAUbox. The doctor of psychology organizes the office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg: “I coordinate the work of five people in a wide variety of working groups and committees, and the constellations are constantly changing. FAUbox is the most important tool for communication.” The most important function in this scenario is the assignment of roles through access rights. Those who share folders or files with others determine who is allowed to read, edit, or co-manage documents. This is how Hinrichs-Mayer distributes and organizes information to different working groups and to different positions or roles. Her wish: “FAUbox is easy to set up and reliable. If I could structure the access rights to folders better, it would make my work a lot easier.”
Tip: There are video tutorials to help you get started and learn how to use BayernShare.
Secure storage & transfer
To this end, all data is stored on certified servers in data centres and encrypted prior to transmission. The constructive cooperation between RRZE and LRZ resulted in the two services merging in 2022. FAUbox and LRZ Sync+Share became BayernShare. Although they are organised and hosted in different locations and on different servers, users can now share files with users of the other system via their account. This simplifies the exchange and collaboration process in Bavaria, which previously only allowed for the sharing of folders and files via links.
BayernShare has long since evolved from a file-sharing service into a comprehensive cloud collaboration platform for Bavaria. Each account, which can be requested by researchers and students at Bavarian universities, departments or research institutes, includes 50 GB of storage space and can be increased if necessary. Integrated OnlyOffice tools simplify joint online document, presentation and spreadsheet editing. The system automatically synchronises changes. Users can grant their partners different access rights for files or folders.
BayernShare and GCS
The Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) is an association of Germany's three supercomputing centres. Its approximately 60 employees are based in Garching, Jülich and Stuttgart and rely on BayernShare as a repository for documents and files: sorted into various folders, information on the financing and management of the GCS can be found here, as well as documents for public relations work. Videos for joint trade fair appearances or press releases are not only reviewed, but also created, corrected and supplemented jointly. ‘This runs smoothly and invisibly for all of us,’ says GCS employee Dr Ferdinand Jamitzky. With the help of BayernShare, the GCS also exchanges applications for purchases and joint projects with the Association of German Engineers (VDI), which controls expenditure on behalf of the federal government.
Tip: BayernShare stores 5 versions – the number can be configured – of a file: To reactivate a previous version, the owners of the folder first click on the recycle bin icon, then on the Coding folder, where they restore the relevant file. This means that even deleted files can be recovered until the account is closed.
A popular and useful service
Good reasons to use BayernShare, FAUbox, and Sync+Share include data protection, security, and the ability to collaborate from different locations. Around 120,000 students, lecturers and researchers at 24 Bavarian universities and institutes currently use the service to store around 500 million files of varying sizes, totalling around 600 terabytes.
Students use BayernShare to store files that they want to edit and share with fellow students anywhere, while research groups use it as a shared repository to exchange documents and jointly create patent applications, proposals, and studies. Lecturers and professors use BayernShare to make reading lists and other information accessible for lectures and seminars. Since the start of the pandemic, BayernShare has also supported online exams, allowing everyone to access the questions simultaneously. Organisations involved in high-performance computing (HPC) and universities have described further usage scenarios to us — let yourself be inspired!
File sharing at HITS
In 2023, Sync+Share and FAUbox were introduced as a project for the Digitalverbund Bayern. The cloud platform is in active use there – for example, at the Inter-University IT Services (HITS). The HITS Information Security (HITS IS) team is spread across four locations and coordinates collaboration with the help of BayernShare. This also gives all members flexibility and allows them to plan and make decisions independently of their location. ‘We work with many shared folders,’ explains Thomas Schkoda, Head of HITS IS. The group uses them to edit presentations about their services, store service and process descriptions, collect email and other templates, and develop images and texts to educate people about information security. ‘Synchronising files doesn't always work when several people are working on them at the same time,’ reports Schkoda. The members of the HITS team therefore often download files to their hard drives, add to or correct them there, label them with an abbreviation, and one of them brings the versions together at the end. If the integrated OnlyOffice programmes are used, this does not happen and documents can be synchronised online.
Tip: Presentations and files larger than 500 megabytes can only be edited locally in BayernShare. They should be downloaded to the hard drive for this purpose. An alternative to abbreviations is to set deadlines for each person working on a file. This has the advantage that all improvements are made in one file and can be quickly checked using the ‘track changes’ collaboration feature.
Cloudy Future
BayernShare is organised by three IT specialists at the LRZ and one at the RRZE. They are already planning additional features for the future. BayernShare's security is set to be enhanced with multi-factor authentication before the end of the anniversary year. Users will also be looking forward to new folder structures, which will enable them to organise exchanges with various partners via subfolders. Last but not least, BayernShare is now also being offered and developed further by Digitalverbund Bayern, a collaboration between all Bavarian colleges and universities. We predict that this will lead to the service being used even more widely. (vs | LRZ)
BayernShare at KONWIHR
The Competence Network for Scientific Computing (KONWIHR) is a unique institution for supercomputing: it supports the development and optimisation of scientific codes financially and through active support from HPC specialists. Twice a year, researchers and working groups can submit applications for funding, which are collected on the BayernShare platform and reviewed by various institutions and individuals. On behalf of KONWIHR, the RRZE and the LRZ also organise a joint online workshop on code programming and optimisation. By registering for the course, participants gain access to a BayernShare folder and can download the training materials.
Tip: Research and working groups should pay attention to who is responsible for a shared folder (ownership) and regulate this in advance: If members leave and LRZ Sync+Share or FAUbox accounts are not used for a longer period of time, the owners will automatically be contacted twice and asked to reactivate their accounts. If there is no response, the account and folders will be deleted after one year.
