Data Transfer Overview

RCIC provides a number of tools for UCI users to be able to move their data in and out of UCI. For data transfer consultation please contact Joulien Tatar (jtatar@uci.edu).

The Data Transfer Nodes (DTN) are dedicated UCI servers that are optimized for fast data transfers. These DTNs are on UCI’s dedicated 10Gb Lightpath network and part of the Pacific Research Platform (PRP). The PRP is an initiative to connect research institutions (mostly) on the west coast to the nationwide Science DMZ network.

Configuration

The data transfer node is:

It is located at the UCI data center and setup for interactive use. The FIONA DTN is not on UCI’s general network, UCINet, but it can access any UCINet host and vice versa. The DTN has a 10Gb ethernet link but has no direct physical link to the HPC or Greenplanet clusters’ filesystems.

Access

UCI researchers need to request access to the DTN (jtatar@uci.edu) and provide information on what research related needs they will utilize the network for. For interactive use, the DTN can be accessed via SSH. For data transfer, the DTN supports the GridFTP services. The DTN also setup as a Globus endpoint that can be found on Globus online by searching for UCI#DTN.

Filesystems

No filesystems are mounted on the DTN. All files that need to be transferred out of UCI must first be transferred to the DTN.

File Transfer Software

GridFTP is recommended for large data transfers. The Globus web client provides an intuitive interface for GridFTP transfers. The Globus interface does automatic transfer tuning that performs as well as expert tuned GridFTP. For manual, command line initiated GridFTP transfers, please see the GridFTP Data Transfer page.

For file transfers smaller than a few GB, you can use Secure Copy (SCP) or Secure FTP (SFTP).

Restrictions

In order to ensure that the FIONA DTN performs optimally for data transfers, we request that users restrict use of the system to tasks related to data transfer only. You are not allowed to run databases on the server or do data processing or testing that saturate the node’s resources. The DTN’s memory and CPU resources must be kept available for interactive user data transfers.

References

http://www.oit.uci.edu/wp-content/uploads/UCI-Lightpath-Access-Policy.pdf http://sites.uci.edu/rcna/uci-lightpath/