We are excited to announce that Globus is now available for testing and use in conjunction with the Firebird HPC cluster. Globus “lets you efficiently, securely, and reliably transfer data directly between systems separated by an office wall or an ocean,” and it also facilitates sharing data.

As the “gold standard” data transfer and management tool, Globus is designed to be a “fire and forget” solution, whether you are moving or sharing datasets of any size. Globus is able to handle network hiccups, data validation, and other issues that can derail most large transfers. And, unlike single-threaded data transfer tools such as rsync, Globus uses GridFTP to drastically speed up large transfers.

While not an exhaustive list, common use cases include moving data between Firebird and national supercomputing resources (e.g., TACC, Anvil, SDSC, Bridges, etc.), sharing data among collaborators, automating moving data from scientific instruments to Firebird, and even seamlessly scale compute jobs onto national resources.

Currently, Globus is available for anyone with an account on Firebird and is primarily meant to facilitate data transfer and sharing to and from that system. We are in the process of deploying Globus for more general use within the Swarthmore community. If you are interested in using Globus as part of your data management workflow, please reach out to Jason Simms (jsimms1@swarthmore.edu).