Eligibility for National and Local Allocations on the Nectar Research Cloud

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) operates the Nectar Research Cloud in collaboration with Node Member Organisations that host the cloud compute and storage infrastructure. Some of the cloud infrastructure is funded by the ARDC through the Commonwealth government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to support national research priorities, and some infrastructure is funded by the Nectar Nodes to support their local priorities.

A request for a project resource allocation on the Nectar Research Cloud can be approved either as a national allocation by the Nectar Allocation Committee, or as a local allocation by a specific Nectar Node. Note that:

• A national allocation can be used on the ARDC-funded cloud infrastructure of any Node (which means you can launch resources in any of our availability zones).
• A local allocation can only be used on the local cloud infrastructure of the Node that approved it.
• Approval of a local allocation is entirely at the Node’s discretion. Typically a Node will only accept an allocation request as local if the researcher submitting the request is from an organisation that is a member of the Node, or that has some arrangement with the Node to use its resources.
• If a node has capacity on their nationally funded infrastructure, they may accommodate a 'local allocation' on that infrastructure, however national allocations always take priority. If capacity is constrained, local allocations may be required to migrate from that infrastructure to accommodate national allocations.

National allocation eligibility criteria

For information on eligibility to use Nectar Research Cloud services, including the Nectar Dashboard and Managed Services, please read our our support article on eligibility.

The Research Cloud National Allocation Scheme (RC-NAS) policy specifies that a project allocation request can only be approved as a national allocation if your project satisfies one or more of these criteria:

1. Your research is currently funded through a national or international research grant.
2. Your research is funded by, or supports, a National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) capability, including the ARDC (for example: an ARDC Research Data Commons project).
3. You have a grant from a federal or state government department or agency for research projects that supports industry, or university research that is directly or jointly funded by industry.
4. You have been approved by the Nectar Allocation Committee as warranting a nationally prioritised allocation.

Most national allocations are approved based on the first three merit criteria, however there may be other circumstances where a national allocation is appropriate. Allocation requests may be approved by the Nectar Allocation Committee if they do not meet the first three criteria, but instead meet one of these guidelines:

• A project that was previously nationally funded (for example: from NCRIS or a national research grant) and is still providing valued services to a national research community.
• A project that is providing a valued national service that supports many researchers from multiple institutions.
• An important service where there are compelling reasons for running across multiple nodes (for example: high availability), with the agreement of those nodes.

If a project meets the above criteria for approval, it is not automatically entitled to a national allocation. In some cases it may be more suited to a local allocation.