Transfer lots of data, effortlessly. Here’s how. Tune in to webcast Sept 8th.

2011-08-182011-08-19 ~ ESnetComms

Got a lot of data to move around? Say, more than 100 Gigabytes? ESnet recommends that you attend this webcast on how to use Globus Online, one of ESnet’s recommended file transfer services. The webcast (https://www.globusonline.org/esnet-webcast-09-08-11/) will show you how to move data as you need it without having to become an IT expert, learn a new command vocabulary or install software.

ESnet provides the high-bandwidth, reliable connections that link scientists at national laboratories to universities and other research institutions so they can more effectively collaborate. We provide the infrastructure, but after listening to our customers, we are taking the next step and recommending the tools to make our network easier to use. As part of this effort, we are introducing our users to services like Globus Online that will help you to move data faster and more reliably.

Globus Online (https://www.globusonline.org/) is a fast, reliable file transfer service that simplifies the process of secure data movement. This free service automates the activity of managing file transfers, whether between computing facilities or from a facility to your local machine. Users can fire-and-forget their request and Globus Online will manage the entire operation – monitoring performance, retrying failed transfers, recovering from faults automatically whenever possible, and reporting status. Globus Online makes it a trivial thing to move big data around, to whatever location needed, without spending lots of time figuring out the right commands or dealing with complicated systems. Simply sign up, specify your endpoints (where the file is now (source) and where you are moving it (destination) authenticating as necessary on the servers, and then click to transfer. Once the endpoint you need is configured into Globus Online, it really is that simple – try it out for yourself! (https://www.globusonline.org/SignUp)

In this session, the Globus Online project lead Steve Tuecke will cover all the basics of usage, including command line interface and using Globus Connect to make your own server or laptop an endpoint. I will be there to provide the ESnet perspective. We will answer your questions and also provide any constructive feedback. To get the most out of the session, sign up and try the service beforehand so you know what you are looking for and are ready to ask the right questions.

For more information, see https://www.globusonline.org/esnet-webcast-09-08-11/ or contact info@globusonline.org.

Brian Tierney, ESnet

ESnet launches portal providing community with unprecented network access and visibility

2011-08-102012-06-07 ~ Jon Dugan

Screen shot 2011-08-08 at 1.40.09 PM — My ESnet portal opens network to the community

The mission of ESnet is to serve the needs of our diverse user community. We work very hard to deliver the fastest, most reliable and best supported science network on the planet. However, our users have at times expressed that ESnet is a “black box” to them. We’ve tried to address this in the past by building a variety of user-facing tools, but up until now, those tools were not well integrated with each other.

Today that changes. Today we publicly launch the MyESnet portal.

What’s a portal?

The term portal or web portal is a widely used but often poorly defined term. It’s a bit of a buzzword like “web-scale” or “the cloud.” When we talk about a portal we have some very specific ideas about what it is. At its core the MyESnet portal is about two things: information and community.

The MyESnet portal provides a coherent interface to information about ESnet to our community.

ESnet collects a huge amount of data as part of operating and monitoring the network. This data is processed and aggregated in various ways to distill useful information. The MyESnet portal provides a cohesive view of that information organized through a single unified interface.

Who, then, is our community? The most narrow definition of our community would simply be the sites we are mandated to support for the DOE Office of Science. But in our view that is far too narrow a definition, as the ESnet community expands far beyond these sites and includes people such as the IT staff at peer organizations and major science facilities, the scientists who depend on ESnet to move their data, the DOE program managers, policy makers and even the general public.

What does the portal do today?

The portal currently implements the following features:

A high-level view of site status
Visualizations of the total traffic that enters and exits a given ESnet site with breakdowns by:

protocol (such as TCP or UDP)
application (such as SSH, HTTP or FTP)
source and destination autonomous system (such as Internet2, GEANT or Google)
source and destination country
source and destination ESnet site

Information on how each site connects to ESnet (both in terms of physical interfaces and BGP peerings)
Ranked “top talkers” list, with the final octet of the IP address obscured
The ESnet maintenance calendar for viewing past and upcoming outages
“Sites of Interest” which allows quick access to information about those sites
A matrix showing the availability for all ESnet sites for the last 12 months

The initial incarnation of the portal is aimed at ESnet site coordinators. However, that doesn’t mean it is only useful to site coordinators. The public can see nearly all the information listed above for each site and can learn a great deal about how ESnet serves that site.

The only item that will not be visible to the public is the very specific “top-talkers” reports as it may contain somewhat sensitive information. Everything else is available for the public to see. (Note that most of this data has been publicly available for some time, but the portal consolidates it in one place.)

Where is it going?

We also have some ambitious goals of what the MyESnet portal might become. We would like to see it expand the information it presents — we are already working on additional functionality. We are very interested to know what the community would like to see from ESnet. Our next task is to develop a tool to make it easy for the ESnet user community to suggest, discuss and rank suggestions for ESnet (including changes to MyESnet). Following that we will develop visualizations of topology information. These visualizations will include tools to show how sites connect to ESnet, what paths traffic takes from a site to user defined endpoints, and visualizations of OSCARS circuits and the overall topology of ESnet. These efforts will include integration with more internal data sources as well as external data sources via perfSONAR.

Check out the new portal at https://my.es.net. Or take a look at the explanatory screen cast which demonstrates the portal with video and voice commentary.

Giving our user community a view into the network is only part of the equation when it comes to enabling science to use networks effectively. We have also developed an extensive knowledge base about how to build, tune and troubleshoot networks to meet the needs of modern, data intensive science. Be sure to take a look at fasterdata.es.net for more information.

MyESnet is your own personal, customized view of ESnet. What else would you like to see?

We look forward to hearing what you think, and your suggestions and comments. Please send any and all feedback to the ESnet Tools Team at tools@es.net. If you would like to be notified when changes are made to the portal you can join the portal-announce@es.net email list by visiting https://listserv.es.net/mailman/listinfo/portal-announce.

–Jon Dugan and the Tools Team

GÉANT improves perfSONAR to the benefit of ESnet users

2011-08-02 ~ ESnetComms

Debugging network performance problems on long multi-domain paths that cross the Atlantic has just become easier for ESnet users. The GÉANT network, a pan-European communications infrastructure serving Europe’s research and education community, has improved the perfSONAR performance monitoring software architecture and toolset it co-developed with ESnet, enhancing the ability of users in the U.S. and Europe to spot red flags in network performance.

PerfSONAR (or as GÉANT calls the European implementation, perfSONAR MDM or Multi-Domain Monitoring) software, enables users to pinpoint trouble spots and bolster end-to-end network performance across network domains—and now across the Atlantic. This improvement to perfSONAR will provide ESnet users enhanced visibility and interoperability, speed the identification of performance issues and help prevent delays caused by engineers working across multiple time zones. European and U.S. users can now monitor network performance via the same intuitive interface using consistent data formats. Specifically, it allows ESnet users to run tests from 8 of the more than 70 ESnet measurement points across the country, including Fermilab in Chicago, IL, Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA to measurement points distributed across the GÉANT European network and vice versa.

This combination of ESnet and European perfSONAR measurement points provides a comprehensive end-to-end view of network performance, invaluable for global data exchange in projects such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.