Organizations Bring Strengths Together To Make Data Transfer and Sharing Easier, More Accessible to Broad Scientific Community
Globus Online and the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) have announced a new collaboration to help scientists better manage the growing amounts of data they need to move, share, and analyze worldwide.
As partners, the organizations plan to develop joint outreach and educational programs designed for small and medium science collaborations that have not traditionally used data transfer tools and advanced networking as part of their workflow, but who will soon require these capabilities as their data volumes increase. ESnet and Globus Online will also pursue coordinated research efforts aimed at better integrating their services to make it easier for scientists to set up efficient end-to-end data transfers.
The collaboration brings together two leading organizations that have successfully tackled the challenge of data transfer and sharing from two different perspectives. ESnet is the Department of Energy’s high performance science network that interconnects the nation’s research laboratories, supercomputing centers and experimental facilities. Built on GridFTP, Globus Online provides an easy-to-use, highly reliable online file transfer and sharing service that researchers can use from their desktop or integrate into their scientific application. Globus Online has become a primary on-ramp for researchers to access high performance networks like ESnet for rapidly sharing data with collaborators or to use remote computing and scientific instrument facilities.
“In this new era of data intensive science impacting nearly all research disciplines, data transfer and sharing tools, and high performance networks are becoming indispensible enablers for scientific discovery,” said Greg Bell, Director of ESnet. “Rather than forcing scientists—especially those without IT expertise—to piece together the myriad tools they need to move their data effectively, we are partnering with Globus Online to provide education on a holistic set of capabilities that can be easily adopted and used right away.”
One ESnet-developed strategy that has been very helpful to scientists coping with rapidly increasing data volumes is the Science DMZ. The Science DMZ calls for a high performance Data Transfer Node, or DTN, which is a dedicated system explicitly built for high performance data transfers. Scientists have achieved incredible data transfer performance when coupling the Globus Online file transfer service with the use of a DTN.
In August 2012, Gary Bates at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo., saw the benefits of a Science DMZ first-hand. Until the Boulder Network Operations Center (BNOC) built a Science DMZ, data trickled through the firewall at 1-2 megabytes per second. Using Globus Online and a newly configured data transfer node, Bates transferred 273 files with a total size of 239.5 gigabytes in just over 10 minutes. “Whoa! Transfer from NERSC to the BNOC data transfer node using Globus is screaming!” Bates wrote. He calculated his transfer rate to be about 395 megabytes per second, or over 3 gigabits per second. “I've never gotten anything close to that before.”
“This example demonstrates the natural synergy between Globus Online and ESnet, highlighting how a high performance, modern network architecture combined with a sophisticated file transfer and sharing service can work together to enhance scientific productivity and make new modes of discovery possible,” said Ian Foster, co-lead of the Globus Online service.