Globus in the age of Global Pandemics
March 20, 2020 | Greg Nawrocki
By now many of us are working from home, out of labs and offices, and off campus. For several this necessity was a bit of a surprise, finding out over the weekend that you were now in remote work mode.
"But I need to do some analysis on my laptop and I forgot to download the data I need from the cluster", you say? If the filesystem on your computing cluster was set up as a Globus endpoint, not a problem. Just set up Globus Connect Personal on your laptop, start the transfer and we'll let you know when the data arrives with an email. We'll even make sure the checksums match. No need to babysit the transfer yourself, and with all the kids at home playing Minecraft and Roblox, ...I mean connecting to Google Classroom, your home network might not be all that stable. And with Globus, you're not fighting everyone else on campus for a piece of the VPN tunnel.
"But I need to move a large amount of data from one campus computing cluster to another", you say? Right, and I suspect that the file sizes don't exactly lend themselves to pushing up to cloud storage somewhere and pulling them back down. Globus is like a remote control for your data transfers. Using our web interface from anywhere with a network connection, you can remotely orchestrate transfers from one filesystem directly to another. No two-hop transfer, and if these resources are both on campus, no need for the data to venture outside the campus network.
"Researchers in the lab are filling up the data storage on an instrument, but I can't be there because of social distancing rules", you say? If the instrument is set up as a Globus endpoint—that's right, Globus isn't just for large cluster filesystems—it can turn the storage on an instrument into a Globus endpoint as well, you can use Globus to remotely initiate and monitor the transfer. You can even automate those workflows with our scriptable command line interface.
"I just made a really important discovery and I need to share my data with others", you say? Great, we sure could use some important discoveries about now! Just create a guest collection on your Globus endpoint and choose other individuals to share that data with. Or even use Globus Groups to manage access to multiple people. No need to have your IT folks set up an SFTP server, no need to push the data up to cloud hosted sharing. Safe, secure and controlled sharing right from your own filesystem.
You’ve got enough to concern yourself with these days, data management tasks should not be one of them. Focus on your research and staying healthy. Let Globus flatten your data curve.
P.S. If you're working on COVID-19 you can access all Globus features at no cost.