Top Supercomputing Center Enables Globus for Thousands of Users

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) has enabled Globus as a preferred method of data movement and archiving for the thousands of scientists and researchers who use the center on a daily basis. Globus is part of a NERSC initiative to make data and computing services available online. As NERSC’s software group leader David Skinner says, “We need to provide web-based ways to accomplish computing tasks – it’s what our scientists are coming to expect, and it’s also what will ultimately make them more productive.”

“Globus actually makes web-based data syncing an easy, nearly trivial process,” says Skinner, "so you don’t have to be an IT or middleware expert to move your files.” NERSC scientists can use Globus for large file transfer and for "drag and drop archiving" to move data between its long-time archival storage and compute systems – making it much easier to back up or restore relevant data using a visual interface.

Highlights:

• "The Globus service seems to be just what our scientists have been looking for."
• "Our users require a high performance data transfer solution that is both reliable and secure.  To have found such a system that is also amazingly easy to use is a fantastic bonus – it means our scientists can now reliably move large datasets with the push of a button. They don't have to worry about about whether files can get where they need to go, or wonder about the best way to tune the system. It just works.”
• "Drag and drop archiving is an incredibly useful feature. Now it will be much easier to backup or restore relevant data using a visual interface."
• "It just makes sense to enable Globus for our users. Our scientists are familiar with tools like scp and GridFTP, but with Globus we can offer a much simpler and faster method for moving data."
• "Users can just pick it up and run with it."
• "We expect better performance with fewer people involved in configuring and making sure performance actually happens."
• "Nowadays people go to the web for everything, and our users are looking to us to evaluate, recommend and provide access to reliable, secure services via the web. That’s what led us to Globus ."
• "We need to provide web-based ways to accomplish computing tasks – it’s what our scientists are coming to expect, and it’s also what will ultimately make them more productive."
• "Globus actually makes web-based data syncing an easy, nearly trivial process, so you don’t have to be an IT or middleware expert to move your files."

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