The archive is based around a 1TB local storage area, plus a 7TB allocation of off-site storage at SDSC's DataCentral. The goal of the archive is to provide easy access to this data, no matter where it is stored. In the future, data will be relocated to provide fastest access to the most popular datasets. The archive chiefly stores outputs from atmospheric models, such as GFDL, and hydrodynamic models, such as SWAN and ADCIRC.

As an initial demonstration of the archive, in 2005, a portal was constructed using the GridSphere portal framework. This portal remains in use, which is located at http://scoop.lsu.edu/, and provides a number of facilities to users. These include the ability to search the archive for files, which can then be downloaded using either http or GridFTP, to the user's desktop, or directly to a remote location (GridFTP only). We have also designed and implemented tools which allow the SCOOP Partners to easily extract data from the command line. These are in the process of being deployed to the SCOOP Partners.

The portal also provides a simple interface that allows popular coastal modeling codes, e.g. ADCIRC, to be run and tracked on the SCOOPGrid testbed resources; a monitoring page informs users of the availability of these resources.