Hello,
I administer a CryoSPARC installation at a computing center, and I’d like to get feedback from the CryoSPARC community regarding feature ideas around project lifecycle and storage management.
For context: We are facing an issue where our CryoSPARC users use very large allocations of storage, which should be used for active research data, for finished projects and old raw data. We offer other solutions for cold storage (S3-compatible storage and tape storage). Still, the additional burden of moving data out and in with custom scripts, managing symlinks, and leftovers in the CryoSPARC database is often too big a barrier.
This led us to wonder whether CryoSPARC could eventually support an additional project-management action, Transfer Project to External Storage, alongside the existing actions (Detach, Archive, Delete). Potential functionality could include:
- Offload project data to an external destination (e.g., S3-compatible storage or other provider)
- Optionally including associated raw data
- Simplifying restore operations into active storage (e.g., updating raw data location)
- Integrating with existing project lifecycle actions (e.g., automatic detach, clean-up of database and filesystem leftovers)
We’re considering developing an in-house solution based on the CryoSPARC API to help automate these operations, even if it’s not integrated directly into the CryoSPARC web app.
Before investing in such effort, however, we’d be interested in hearing:
- Would other CryoSPARC administrators and users find such an addition useful?
- If so, would the CryoSPARC dev team consider implementing and maintaining such features in CryoSPARC core and the web app?