New ARDC Nectar Research Cloud Node at Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre to Advance Australian Research

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre are excited to announce that a new node of the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud will launch by the end of October 2025 for Western Australian and national cross-institutional research. 

This is an exciting outcome of the MOU signed between ARDC and Pawsey in 2024, which aims to bring critical Australian compute, storage facilities and resources closer together, creating a seamless and efficient research environment for Australian researchers and national data collections. Both organisations are enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). 

Rosie Hicks, CEO, ARDC, said, “We’re delighted to bring the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud to researchers in Western Australia through our partnership with Pawsey. Expanding Nectar will enhance national collaboration and research. Bringing together Nectar and the Setonix supercomputer at Pawsey will drive integrated initiatives across levels of computing and data.”

Mark Stickells, CEO, Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, said, “Our collaboration with ARDC is a vital investment in Australia’s national digital research infrastructure. Hosting a Nectar node at Pawsey expands access to powerful, flexible cloud computing for researchers in WA and across the country. Alongside Setonix, our world-class supercomputer, this capability supports the full spectrum of data-intensive science. It’s a tangible outcome of our shared commitment under NCRIS to build a more connected and capable research ecosystem for Australia.”

The new Pawsey node of Nectar is forecast to come online by the end of October 2025. The new node will comprise over 6,000 virtual cores of compute resources for virtual machines (VMs), with 500 TB of fast NVMe drives for volume storage. Root disks for VMs will be stored in 90 TB of NVMe storage directly on the compute nodes, to provide lower latency. In addition, Pawsey is contributing 2 PB of S3 object storage from Acacia, to be made available through Nectar allocations.

Researchers are encouraged to trial the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud capabilities in the lead up to the launch. Learn how to start your free trial or register for upcoming training.

ARDC Nectar Research Cloud — Powering Australian Research

The ARDC Nectar Research Cloud is a federated service that is co-designed and receives co-investment from universities and research infrastructure facilities across Australia. The federation enables cross-institutional research collaboration at a national scale.

Nectar hosts powerful computing services for researchers, designed to save time, boost computing resources, and promote collaboration. They include services to run virtual desktops, Jupyter Notebooks, BinderHub, GPUs, and preemptible instances. Nectar also provides infrastructure for national services through the ARDC Thematic Research Data Commons and is used by research organisations across the country, including:

• 34 Australian universities
• 14 NCRIS facilities 
• 16 ARC Centres of Excellence and ARC industrial transformation hubs and training centres.

All Australian researchers can try Nectar with a 6-month trial, and Nectar offers ongoing access to researchers in all fields of research at no cost to eligible researchers. 

About ARDC

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) drives the development of national digital research infrastructure that provides Australian researchers with competitive advantage through data.

We facilitate programs and partnerships that provide the research community and industry access to nationally significant, data-intensive digital research infrastructure, platforms, skills and collections of high-quality data. We also support researchers and their organisations with digital research services, most of which are either available to all or to merit-based researchers at no cost.

Our digital research infrastructure activities directly support the Australian research community to generate real and tangible outcomes for society.

The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

About Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre

The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre accelerates scientific discoveries and fosters innovation across Australia’s research landscape. Named after Dr Joseph Pawsey, a pioneering Australian radio astronomer, we honour his legacy by enabling breakthroughs for over 4,000 researchers. 

Our impact spans diverse fields such as radio astronomy, energy, resources, engineering, bioinformatics, and health sciences. As an unincorporated joint venture between CSIRO (Australia’s national science agency), Curtin University, Murdoch University, and The University of Western Australia, collaboration is our driving force.

Pawsey is an NCRIS facility funded by the Department of Education. The Australian Government also provided a $70 million grant for the Pawsey Capital Refresh project. Additionally, support for the Centre comes through the Western Australian Government and our partner organisations.

Learn more about the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud.

This article was published in partnership with the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre.