Somerville is a large-scale research data platform hosted by the University of Edinburgh and provided through IRIS to support data-intensive science. The service combines multiple storage technologies, including scalable Ceph storage, hypervisor local SSD and bulk NAS, accessed through industry-standard OpenStack interfaces, with database services that enable researchers to organise, manage and query scientific datasets efficiently. Together these capabilities support the full research data lifecycle, from data ingestion and preservation through to discovery, analysis and sharing. Somerville is designed to support collaborative research at scale, providing reliable and flexible data services for projects generating large volumes of observational, experimental and computational data. By combining storage, data management and database technologies within a shared national service, Somerville helps research communities maximise the value of their data assets and enables data-driven research across institutions and disciplines.
