Manage Your RDSS Share

Manage Your RDSS Share#

Setting up a share, modifying a share, canceling a share, and managing access to a share must be done by share owners or data managers.

  • The share owner is typically the person in charge of a research group, institute or facility.

  • The data managers, typically a senior staff member in the group who handles day to day operations, who were specified when the share was set up.

Please contact them to execute any of the following tasks. If you’re not sure who has these role for your share, email rdss-help@northwestern.edu .

Note

Researchers in the Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM) have access to a related service, FSMResFiles, at no cost and should not use RDSS. See Feinberg IT’s Research Data Storage website for more information.

Modifications to FSMResFiles are controlled by FSM IT. Email fsmhelp@northwestern.edu for assistance.

Setting Up an RDSS Share#

To request an RDSS share, view the service information and pricing

RDSS is comprised of two zones:

  • resfiles: appropriate for storing non-regulated research data

  • resfiles audit: intended for sensitive research data and data subject to state and federal regulations or data use agreements (DUAs); it creates audit logs when files are accessed, created, updated, and deleted.

You can request an RDSS share in one of these zones by filling out the linked form.

Our team will create a share with your requested quota, bill your chartstring to your requested prepayment period, grant read/write access to the share owner and data manager you specified in the form, and create Active Directory Groups that will allow you to self-manage access to your share.

Once your share has been created, you will receive a message from our Northwestern IT Help Ticketing system with information about your share and instructions on how to connect. Please also see our RDSS user documentation for detailed instructions.

Managing Access/User Permissions#

Share owners and data managers can control access to each RDSS share is controlled through two Active Directory (AD) groups:

  • NU SMB <sharename> Read-Only gives users read only access

  • NU SMB <sharename> Read-Write gives users read-write access

Adding/removing users from these groups will grant/remove permissions to the entire RDSS share. RDSS does not support giving users access to individual files or folders. Those with access to a share have access to everything in the share.

To access these AD groups:

  1. Log in to the Self-Service Group Management Tool with the following credentials

    • Account name: ads\<NetID>, where NetID is your Northwestern NetID

    • Password: your NetID password

  2. Click on My AD groups in the left hand panel

  3. You should see a read only and a read-write group for each share that you own/manage

See Managing group permissions using the Self-Service Group Management tool for instructions on how to add or remove users from these lists.

Note

Only those with NetIDs can be given access to RDSS shares.

You can request affiliate or guest NetIDs for external collaborators.

FSMResFiles

Share permissions on FSMResFiles are managed by FSM IT. Email fsmhelp@northwestern.edu for help managing user access to files and directories.

Making Changes to Your Share#

You can make changes to the quota, billing account, or share managers for your RDSS share at any time. To change any of the following, email rdss-help@northwestern.edu with your share name and information specified below.

  • Share quota: what you would like the new quota to be, in terabytes (TB)

  • Billing ChartString: the new Chart String

  • Contacts: name, email and NetID for the new share contacts, along with whether you’d like them to be the primary or secondary contact

Our staff will make the requested changes and follow up with an email via the Northwestern IT Help Ticket system.

Note

If you are not the share owner, copy the share owner on the email above. They will have to reply to the Northwestern IT Help Ticket and indicate that they approve of the request.

Cancelling Your Share#

You can cancel your share at any time. To complete this process:

  1. Delete all of the data in the share.

  2. Contact rdss-help@northwestern.edu if you experience trouble deleting your data.

  3. Email rdss-help@northwestern.edu with your share name, copying the primary share owner on the message if you are not the share owner.

We will delete the share and notify you when the process is complete.