Building up EOSC Node Germany
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Federation connects research infrastructures, data, and services across Europe, laying the foundation for a common European space for open science. The Building up EOSC Node Germany project is developing Germany’s contribution to this federation: the EOSC Node Germany.
The EOSC Node Germany is intended to serve as a central access point for researchers in Germany to the EOSC Federation. Suitable research data, repositories, and services from the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) will be connected to the European research infrastructure and made accessible to scientific users in Germany and across Europe.
NFDI - High-capacity Hardware
To this end, the project is establishing the technical, organizational, and legal foundations for the EOSC Node Germany. Across four task areas, the project addresses the establishment of the basic platform and its core functions, the development of standardized processes for connecting services, and the creation of governance structures for the ongoing operation and further development of the EOSC Node Germany. The goal is to create sustainable, interoperable, and resilient access to research data and services.
Contribution by TU Dresden / ZIH
Storage Federation
TU Dresden is coordinating the “Storage Federation” use case under the leadership of CDIO Prof. Lars Bernard. Implementation is taking place at the ZIH in collaboration with the IT Center at RWTH Aachen University, led by Dr. Marius Politze.
The goal is to establish a federated storage infrastructure that connects high-capacity storage resources at the two NHR sites via standardized, S3-compatible interfaces. This will enable research data to be flexibly provided and managed across local, national, and European infrastructure levels.
The infrastructure developed is intended to provide a foundation for FAIR-compliant and data-intensive research within the EOSC Federation and, at the same time, serve as a blueprint for integrating additional storage providers. In the future, the national storage federation is also to be connected to activities at the European level, particularly within the framework of GÉANT.
Technical Components
1. Federated S3 Storage
- Scalable object storage interface
- Secure and durable for large unstructured datasets
- Sovereign infrastructure compliant with FAIR principles
2. Integration of IAM4NFDI
- Federated authentication via Community-AAIs
- Cross-consortia identity management
- EOSC Federation compatibility
3. FAIR Digital Objects (FDO)
- Machine-actionable metadata integration
- Interoperable data access across platforms (Coscine, Mediaflux)
- Enhanced discoverability and reuse
4. Integration into the EOSC Node Germany
- Pan-European interoperability
- Seamless data mobility
- Lifecycle management across tiers
Storage Federation: Core Objectives of EOSC
Partners
The project is coordinated by the NFDI Secretariat and brings together ten German universities and research and infrastructure institutions:
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)
- Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)
- Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG)
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
- RWTH Aachen University
- Technische Universität Berlin
- TUD Dresden University of Technology
- University of Freiburg
- University of Mannheim
- ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
Project website
Funding
German Research Foundation (DFG), “Leistungszentren für Forschungsinformation (LIS)” programme
Duration
August, 2026 – December, 2027