Case Study
University of Gothenburg
Providing secure vaults for sensitive research data
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Challenge
The IT department at the University of Gothenburg has extensive experience providing support for research involving sensitive data. They offer environments built to comply with ethical standards and meet technical security requirements.
As needs and demands differ significantly between research groups, this task involved creating a unique, tailored “bubble” for each project. It was a reliable but cumbersome way of working, as considerable manual effort was required both for implementation and operations.
“We started to figure out if we could standardise this procedure in any way. Our basic idea was to offer these environments on tap, as a service,” says Carl-Johan Schenström, infrastructure specialist at the University of Gothenburg.
To turn these thoughts into a workable concept, a group was formed among IT architects and infrastructure experts, where Carl-Johan worked with university colleagues Johan Kindstrand, Peter Sällberg and Rikard Nilsson. As they sketched a solution, they recognised that many components were required for a functioning environment.
The fundamental need was for an environment built for securely managing personal data and other sensitive data. Furthermore, support was needed for data ingestion, for example, from surveys commonly used in research. Collected data must also be stored and preserved, sometimes for extended periods of time, which calls for an archiving solution.
We were already used to these devices from running our regular environment, so there was no need to learn about new stuff. Proact came up with affordable solutions matching our needs, with servers and storage for the new environment. We are very happy with it.
Solution
Separate environment needed
An early conclusion was to create a separate environment fully isolated from the university’s regular IT infrastructure.
“We must ensure that the right people have access. The requirements are higher than in our regular environment. We need to know exactly who is admitted inside, doing what,” says Carl-Johan Schenström.
The users are essentially also different from the regular university user group. Many research groups include associates from other universities in Sweden or abroad who need access on equal terms with University of Gothenburg employees. The solution was to build a separate user database from scratch with Active Directory.
To launch the separate research environment, acquiring dedicated hardware followed naturally. The university already uses Dell servers and NetApp storage systems, and for the new environment, Proact proposed a similar setup:
“We were already used to these devices from running our regular environment, so there was no need to learn about new stuff. Proact came up with affordable solutions matching our needs, with servers and storage for the new environment. We are very happy with it,” says Carl-Johan Schenström.
Modern container technology
The software environment is based on Linux and container technology for application development. The university selected Red Hat OpenShift, a hybrid cloud platform that includes Kubernetes for container management with a Linux foundation.
“Proact had no previous experience from OpenShift, but they have gotten familiar with it, done testing and learned a lot along the way so that we can get relevant advice,” says Carl-Johan Schenström.
The completed solution was named the Trusted Research Environment (TRE). It was first tried as a proof of concept, which was successful. Since early 2024, the University of Gothenburg has provided TRE as an “official” service.
With TRE, each research project is assigned a so-called vault to which authorised users within the project are given access. They log into a workspace usually set up as a remote Windows desktop. The multi-user environment enables collaboration and makes it easy to scale resources such as compute capacity and storage as needed.
So far, 70 vaults have been implemented and are used by researchers across a wide range, from genetics and biostatistics to sport science and health. Demand is steadily rising, and there is ample room for growth in the new environment.
Adding AI resources
The university continues to enhance TRE, adding functions to meet new needs and to benefit from tech advancement. AI and machine learning are particularly in demand. Therefore, additional GPU resources have been added to the environment to run services like transcription (using Whisper from Open AI), which has quickly become popular.
The standardised environment not only saves time for the IT department but for research leaders too, as it facilitates the approval process for new projects.
“We have worked closely with the university’s legal and security experts to get the solution approved for a research context, including GDPR compliance,” says Carl-Johan Schenström.
Benefits
- A standardised environment provides shorter lead times and lower initial costs
- New services and features available to all users on equal terms
- Modern container platform for application development
- Research approval process facilitated
- Operations and maintenance managed with existing resources and skills
Key components
- Trusted Research Environment, a standardised application environment based on Red Hat OpenShift, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Kubernetes as key components.
- Separate IT infrastructure with dedicated hardware. Servers are from Dell, and storage is from NetApp, supported by Proact.
About the University of Gothenburg
The University of Gothenburg has eight faculties, more than 53,000 students (28,000 full-time), 2,000 PhD students and 6,700 employees.
www.gu.se