Cloudstor Decommissioning

AARNet announced last year that it will be decommissioning its CloudStor services (Sync & Share, SWAN, & S3) on Friday, 15-Dec-2023. This will impact most research organisations and universities across Australia.

More details can be found at https://support.aarnet.edu.au/hc/en-us/articles/5697089309711

How does this impact you and what to do?

There is no immediate risk to files currently held on CloudStor for the time being. The ANU intend to make CloudStor accessible only in read only from late August 2023.

ITS urges all staff who presently use CloudStor to move data. Moving data is straightforward and we recommend moving it to the University-supported OneDrive.

Please see below for more information, and/or please discuss with our Service Desk to get further assistance.

What Happens Next?

ANU ITS has been working with AARNET for a number of months now on a suitable migration strategy for all Cloudstor users at the ANU. We will be taking the following steps over the coming months:

• ITS will directly communicate with all impacted parties from June
• ITS will run a number of workshops in June/July for ANU staff on the CloudStor Migration and solutions moving forward
• It was our intention to put Cloudstor into a read-only state from 28 August 2023. After considering feedback, this date has been revised to October 9, 2023.
• From October 9, 2023 CloudStor will be available only in a read only state. The service will be still available, but you will not be able to add more content.

We urge users to take steps to migrate data to OneDrive as soon as possible. If you have any issues please contact the IT Service Desk.

Limitations

The migration from Cloudstor to OneDrive should for the most part be seamless, however there will be a number of limitations some of you may encounter:

• Support for protocols such as WebDav – WebDav is a common file sharing protocol but is not supported in OneDrive.
• Linux and Mac OS Support – OneDrive does support Linux and Mac OS client, however there may be limitations.
• CloudStor Shares – CloudStor allows users to share entire directories with others. If you are sharing content in this manner you will need to reshare it with your colleagues. If you are consuming content using CloudStor shares you will need to work with the author to identify a longer-term solution or make a copy of the data. ITS is happy to advise in such circumstances.

OneDrive

ANU uses Microsoft Office 365 for all of its desktop needs and is available for all staff. Like you, O365 works everywhere, across devices.

OneDrive is one such tool that all staff have at their disposal. You can store up to 1TB of data (if not more), and access it from anywhere with your ANU username and password. It is a recommended secure option, where you can share files, and it allows file synchronization and cloud backup as well. You can also request more storage if you need to, but you will need to log a request via ANU IT Service desk https://services.anu.edu.au/planning-governance/current-projects/anu-service-desk

For further information, you can access https://services.anu.edu.au/information-technology/software-systems/onedrive to learn how to use OneDrive at the ANU.

If you have questions about using OneDrive, please contact our Service Desk for further information.

Please note: This option may not suit all those on CloudStor. Please make sure you reach out to the IT Service Desk to discuss your storage needs.

More Information

ANU has created a site dedicated to the CloudStor transition.  Here you will find information and resources to help you with the transition.  Simply visit the site at: https://anu365.sharepoint.com/sites/Cloudstor (Sharepoint page - internal ANU access only)

If you have any questions, please be sure to reach out to the IT Service Desk.