Kopah: S3-Compatible Research Storage at UW

Overview

Kopah is the University of Washington's on-premises, S3-compatible object storage service. It offers flexible, cost-effective, and scalable storage.

Key Features

S3-compatible storage for use with familiar tools and APIs
Bucket-based organization with support for public sharing links
Compatible with Hyak Klone Supercomputer, Tillicum GPU cluster, and major cloud platforms
No data egress or access fees
Exempt from indirect costs
Dedicated support from UW Research Computing staff

Business Model and Pricing

Kopah offers three main options:

Plan	Quantity (TB)	Term	Hardware Cost	Monthly Cost per TB
Quota	Any	1 month+	$0	$5.04
Small Condo	12	3 - 6 years	$360	$3.46
Large Condo	300	3 - 6 years	$14,141	$2.60

Quota Plan - ideal for monthly block quotas needed with no up-front (equipment) charges and no time commitment. Limited by a quota that you select, which can be increased or decreased in 1 TB units and adjusted monthly.
Condo plans - require a 3–6 year commitment to monthly fees and a one-time equipment purchase.
- Small Condo plan - 12 TB of usable storage (1 hard drive)
- Large Condo plan - 300 TB of usable storage (1 storage node)

Important Consideration: Kopah is not backed up. For backup solutions, UW researchers can use services like Lolo or external systems.

Share your Research Data with Kopah

Kopah S3 Storage is ideal for collaborations:

Kopah access is controlled by access and secret key pairs, meaning that it is available for external collaborators. Account subdivision and bucket control are available to control collaborator access.

Kopah is a Globus endpoint making it easier than ever to share read/write and read-only access with colleagues, external collaborators, and the general public.

Get this Service

Access to Kopah

There are two ways to access Kopah for object storage:

Option A: Free Trial Access

A Kopah demonstration account is intended for prospective users to test the platform and evaluate whether it is suitable for their storage needs. These demonstration accounts provide users with access to 1TB of storage for one month.

Demonstration Account Request Form

Option B: Purchasing a Storage Account

For sustained or production storage workloads, Kopah offers three main plans to fit a range of use cases and budgets (see Business Model and Pricing for more information).

Kopah Storage Account Request Form & Cost Calculator

Our team will review your request and get back to you with next steps.

Eligibility

Primary Kopah account holders must have an active UW NetID. An active UW worktag is required for sustained, production-level access.

Kopah is available to:

UW faculty, academic staff, and research units.

UW affiliates supported by a sponsoring department.

Restrictions

Not supported:

Commercial product development.

Use with HIPAA-regulated data.

Important

Kopah is not approved for use with HIPAA-regulated Protected Health Information (PHI), as data stored on Kopah is not encrypted at rest.

Support & Availability

User support

Service Team Support

Support hours: Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST
System availability: 24/7/365 (except during maintenance)
Scheduled maintenance:
- Second Tuesday of every month, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Extended quarterly maintenance: Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct, 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. the following day

Accounts typically provisioned within 1–3 business days

Related Services

Questions

To request current pricing or begin the purchase process please complete the Kopah Storage Account Request Form & Cost Calculator.
To request a demonstration account, please complete the Demonstration Account Request Form
For more information, please visit our Kopah Service Catalog.
Not sure where to start? Complete the Research Computing Consulting Intake Form to connect with the UW-IT Research Computing team for guidance on selecting the right computing services for your research project.