Decommissioning of CIFEX
The IT service CIFEX will be be shut down on 1.12.2021.
Research and teaching are characterised by interdisciplinary and multi-location cooperation. The exchange of the data needed/generated is a vital factor in technical success. In previous years, the technical capacities and options for online exchange of large data quantities were limited. This was the reason for the establishment of the CIFEX service (CISD File EXchanger) at ETH in 2008. A further development of the ITS SIS predecessor CISD. The service permits easy online exchange of large files in a straightforward manner.
Usage statistics since 2019
- CIFEX has been used by 9,876 people
- with 68,272 uploads and 84,230 downloads
- consequently, over 1.5 TB of data have been exchanged
Technical developments and the new forms of cooperation, such as Internet bandwidth, online collaboration and cloud storage as well as the life cycle of the technical pillars of CIFEX required re-evaluation of the CIFEX service.
In order to be able to continue to operate CIFEX in its accustomed form, extensive technical renovation would on the one hand have been necessary. After 12 years of use, re-development of the CIFEX web UI would have been required. This is based on the Google Web Toolkit, which is no longer supported by Google. As a result, reliable operation of CIFEX with constantly changing browsers is no longer possible. On the other hand, there are many alternatives to CIFEX with the new online collaboration platforms and increasingly large supply of (public/private) cloud storage solutions.
Due to these technical developments and the current budget situation, the decision was taken to shut down the CIFEX service on 1.12.2021.
Exchange of large files
ITS alternatives to CIFEX:
- polybox (polybox | ETH Zurich – data in ETH)
- NAS (Network Attached Storage (NAS) | ETH Zurich – data in ETH)
- RDM (Research Data Management | ETH Zurich – data in ETH)
Alternatives to CIFEX in the university sphere:
- SWITCHfilesender (Send files | SWITCH – data in the SWITCH cloud)
Alternatives to CIFEX outside universities:
- Infomaniak (SwissTransfer – Send large files securely and free of charge – data in CH)
Contact
- IT Services will provide technical support if you want to share large data quantities. You can reach ITS Scientific IT Services (ITS SIS) via the ITS Service Desk or by email sis.helpdesk@ethz.ch
- ITS Service Desk, https://ethz.ch/services/en/it-services/service-desk.html
- https://ethz.ch/services/en/it-services/katalog/storage/cifex.html
