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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Complete and Correct Transfer of Information (CACTI)

Many distributed systems, file transfer mechanisms, and message passing systems offer reliability mechanisms such as acknowledgements, retries, and durability. While these tools may be “good enough” for their typical use cases, they may not offer sufficient coverage for the wide range of faults that impact data transfers and communication. A gap in the reliability measures may lead to some small amount of data loss. Some high-consequence systems cannot tolerate the loss or corruption of even a single record. We present seven principles that will counter a wide range of faults and protect against data loss and corruption. These principles bring together lessons learned from a wide range of technologies and can inform appropriate system design and application usage. These principles will help readers reason on how prevent data loss in a multi-hop pipeline and how to properly use tools that may have a deficiency in reliability.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Accelerating Advanced Light Source Science Through Multi-Facility HPC Workflows

Synchrotron light sources support a wide array of techniques to investigate materials, often producing complex, high-volume data that challenge traditional workflows. At the Advanced Light Source (ALS), we developed infrastructure to move microtomography data over ESnet to ALCF and NERSC, where CPU- and GPU-based algorithms generate 3D reconstructed volumes of experimental samples. We employ two data movement and reconstruction models: real-time processing as data streams directly to NERSC compute nodes, and automated file transfer to NERSC and ALCF file systems. The streaming pipeline provides users with feedback in under ten seconds, while the file-based workflow produces high-quality reconstructions suitable for deeper analysis in 20-30 minutes. This infrastructure enables users to utilize HPC resources without direct access to backend systems. We plan to extend this architecture to more endstations, supporting our beamline scientists and users.

Abramov, David↗
DOE OSTI2017

A comparison of different database technologies for the CMS AsyncStageOut transfer database

AsyncStageOut (ASO) is the component of the CMS distributed data analysis system (CRAB) that manages users transfers in a centrally controlled way using the File Transfer System (FTS3) at CERN. It addresses a major weakness of the previous, decentralized model, namely that the transfer of the user’s output data to a single remote site was part of the job execution, resulting in inefficient use of job slots and an unacceptable failure rate. Currently ASO manages up to 600k files of various sizes per day from more than 500 users per month, spread over more than 100 sites. ASO uses a NoSQL database (CouchDB) as internal bookkeeping and as way to communicate with other CRAB components. Since ASO/CRAB were put in production in 2014, the number of transfers constantly increased up to a point where the pressure to the central CouchDB instance became critical, creating new challenges for the system scalability, performance, and monitoring. This forced a re-engineering of the ASO application to increase its scalability and lowering its operational effort. In this contribution we present a comparison of the performance of the current NoSQL implementation and a new SQL implementation, and how their different strengths and features influenced the design choices and operational experience. We also discuss other architectural changes introduced in the system to handle the increasing load and latency in delivering output to the user.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

FTS3: Data Movement Service in containers deployed in OKD [Slides]

The File Transfer Service (FTS3) is a data movement service developed at CERN which is used to distribute the majority of the Large Hadron Collider's data across the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) infrastructure. At Fermilab, we have deployed a couple of FTS3 instances for Intensity Frontier experiments (e.g. DUNE) to transfer data in America and Europe, using a container-based strategy. During this talk, we are going to present the two different configurations currently running at Fermilab, comparing and contrasting a Docker-based OKD deployment against a traditional RPM-based deployment and giving an overview of the possible issues encountered. In addition, we discuss our method of certificate management and maintenance utilizing Kubernetes cronjobs.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

FTS3: Data Movement Service in containers deployed in OKD [Slides]

The File Transfer Service (FTS3) is a data movement service developed at CERN which is used to distribute the majority of the Large Hadron Collider's data across the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) infrastructure. At Fermilab, we have deployed FTS3 instances for Intensity Frontier experiments (e.g. DUNE) to transfer data in America and Europe, using a container-based strategy. In this article we summarize our experience building docker images based on work from the SLATE project (slateci.io) and deployed in OKD, the community distribution of Red Hat OpenShift. Additionally, we discuss our method of certificate management and maintenance utilizing Kubernetes CronJobs. Finally, we also report on the two different configurations currently running at Fermilab, comparing and contrasting a Docker-based OKD deployment against a traditional RPM-based deployment.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

ESnet Secure Copy (EScp) v0.6

EScp is a high speed transfer tool with a similar command line syntax to scp. Unlike SCP it is designed to transfer files at high speed, thus far we have been able to show 100gbit/s transfers, although I expect that the throughput should scale in proportion to the network interface, i.e. I expect 400gbit/s performance on our 400gbit/s test bed. EScp achieves good performance through an innovative design (multithreaded, zero copy transfers), along with pluggable filters and I/O engines. As an example, you can switch from POSIX i/O to UIO by checking a different engine. It also natively supports encryption, and cheksums for file verification and transport security. AAA is through standard SSH (same as SCP). By taking advantage of filters, EScp supports transferring unstructured data and/or I/O to non-posix data sources. Examples include streaming data (i.e. from equipment), transferring data to the cloud, and/or supporting non-posix file systems (like HPSS).

Shiflett, Charles↗
DOE OSTI2024

Streaming Large-Scale Microscopy Data to a Supercomputing Facility

Data management is a critical component of modern experimental workflows. As data generation rates increase, transferring data from acquisition servers to processing servers via conventional file-based methods is becoming increasingly impractical. The 4D Camera at the National Center for Electron Microscopy generates data at a nominal rate of 480 Gbit s -1 (87,000 frames s -1 ⁠), producing a 700 GB dataset in 15 s. To address the challenges associated with storing and processing such quantities of data, we developed a streaming workflow that utilizes a high-speed network to connect the 4D Camera’s data acquisition system to supercomputing nodes at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, bypassing intermediate file storage entirely. In this work, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our streaming pipeline in a production setting through an hour-long experiment that generated over 10 TB of raw data, yielding high-quality datasets suitable for advanced analyses. Additionally, we compare the efficacy of this streaming workflow against the conventional file-transfer workflow by conducting a postmortem analysis on historical data from experiments performed by real users. Our findings show that the streaming workflow significantly improves data turnaround time, enables real-time decision-making, and minimizes the potential for human error by eliminating manual user interactions.

4D-STEM↗
DOE OSTI2018

Cross-geography scientific data transferring trends and behavior

Wide area data transfers play an important role in many science applications but rely on expensive infrastructure that often delivers disappointing performance in practice. In response, we present a systematic examination of a large set of data transfer log data to characterize transfer characteristics, including the nature of the datasets transferred, achieved throughput, user behavior, and resource usage. This analysis yields new insights that can help design better data transfer tools, optimize networking and edge resources used for transfers, and improve the performance and experience for end users. Our analysis shows that (i) most of the datasets as well as individual files transferred are very small; (ii) data corruption is not negligible for large data transfers; and (iii) the data transfer nodes utilization is low. Insights gained from our analysis suggest directions for further analysis.

Liu, Zhengchun↗
DOE OSTI2017

Experiments and Analyses of Data Transfers Over Wide-Area Dedicated Connections

Dedicated wide-area network connections are increasingly employed in high-performance computing and big data scenarios. One might expect the performance and dynamics of data transfers over such connections to be easy to analyze due to the lack of competing traffic. However, non-linear transport dynamics and end-system complexities (e.g., multi-core hosts and distributed filesystems) can in fact make analysis surprisingly challenging. We present extensive measurements of memory-to-memory and disk-to-disk file transfers over 10 Gbps physical and emulated connections with 0–366 ms round trip times (RTTs). For memory-to-memory transfers, profiles of both TCP and UDT throughput as a function of RTT show concave and convex regions; large buffer sizes and more parallel flows lead to wider concave regions, which are highly desirable. TCP and UDT both also display complex throughput dynamics, as indicated by their Poincare maps and Lyapunov exponents. For disk-to-disk transfers, we determine that high throughput can be achieved via a combination of parallel I/O threads, parallel network threads, and direct I/O mode. Our measurements also show that Lustre filesystems can be mounted over long-haul connections using LNet routers, although challenges remain in jointly optimizing file I/O and transport method parameters to achieve peak throughput.

Rao, Nageswara S.↗
DOE OSTI2015

Recent evolution of the offline computing model of the NOvA experiment

The NOvA experiment at Fermilab is a long-baseline neutrino experiment designed to study ν e appearance in a ν μ beam. Over the last few years there has been intense work to streamline the computing infrastructure in preparation for data, which started to flow in from the far detector in Fall 2013. Major accomplishments for this effort include migration to the use of off-site resources through the use of the Open Science Grid and upgrading the file-handling framework from simple disk storage to a tiered system using a comprehensive data management and delivery system to find and access files on either disk or tape storage. NOvA has already produced more than 6.5 million files and more than 1 PB of raw data and Monte Carlo simulation files which are managed under this model. In addition, the current system has demonstrated sustained rates of up to 1 TB/hour of file transfer by the data handling system. NOvA pioneered the use of new tools and this paved the way for their use by other Intensity Frontier experiments at Fermilab. Most importantly, the new framework places the experiment's infrastructure on a firm foundation, and is ready to produce the files needed for first physics.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Toward a persistent event-streaming system for high-performance computing applications

High-performance computing (HPC) applications have traditionally relied on parallel file systems and file transfer services to manage data movement and storage. Alternative approaches have been proposed that use direct communications between application components, trading persistence and fault tolerance for speed. Event-driven architectures, as popularized in enterprise contexts, present a compelling middle ground, avoiding the performance cost and API constraints of parallel file systems while retaining persistence and offering impedance matching between application components. However, adapting streaming frameworks to HPC workloads requires addressing challenges unique to HPC systems. This paper investigates the potential for a streaming framework designed for HPC infrastructures and use cases. We introduce Mofka, a persistent event-streaming framework designed specifically for HPC environments. Mofka combines the capabilities of a traditional streaming service with optimizations tailored to the HPC context, such as support for massively multicore nodes, efficient scaling for large producer-consumer workflows, RDMA-enabled high-performance network communications, specialized network fabrics with multiple links per node, and efficient handling of large scientific data payloads. Built using the Mochi suite of HPC data service components, Mofka provides a lightweight, modular, and high-performance solution for persistent streaming in HPC systems. We present the architecture of Mofka and evaluate its performance against Kafka and Redpanda using benchmarks on diverse platforms, including Argonne's Polaris and Oak Ridge's Frontier supercomputers, showing up to 8× improvement in throughput in some scenarios. We then demonstrate its utility in several real-world applications: a tomographic reconstruction pipeline, a workflow for the discovery of metal-organic frameworks for carbon capture, and the instrumentation of Dask workflows for provenance tracking and performance analysis.

HPC↗
DOE OSTI2024

GDSA framework, a computational framework for complex modeling problems in radioactive waste management

This paper details a computational framework to produce automated, graphical workflows, and how this framework can be deployed to support complex modeling problems like those in nuclear engineering. Key benefits of the framework include: automating previously manual workflows; intuitive construction and communication of workflows through a graphical interface; and automated file transfer and handling for workflows deployed across heterogeneous computing resources. This paper demonstrates the framework's application to probabilistic post-closure performance assessment of systems for deep geologic disposal of nuclear waste. However, the framework is a general capability that can help users running a variety of computational studies.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2025

The ePIC Simulation Campaign Workflow on the Open Science Grid

The ePIC collaboration is realizing the first experiment of the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory that will allow for a precision study of the nucleons and the nucleus at the scale of sea quarks and gluons through the study of electron-proton/ion collisions. This paper will discuss the current workflow for running centralized simulation campaigns for ePIC on the Open Science Grid (OSG) infrastructure. This involves monthly releases of ePIC software and container deployments to CVMFS, generation of input datasets in HepMC format according to collaboration-defined policy, using Snakemake in CI/CD for validation and benchmarking, and submitting jobs to the OSG condor scheduler for opportunistic running on available resources. File transfers utilize XrootD, and Rucio is used for data management. The workflow is continuously refined to improve daily throughput (currently 50-100k core hours per day) and minimize job failures. Since May 2023, monthly simulation campaigns employing the workflow have cumulatively used over 20 million core hours on the OSG and produced over 350 TB of simulation data. The campaigns incorporate simulations for the broad science program of the EIC and are actively used for the detector and physics studies in preparation of the Technical Design Report (TDR).

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

XRootD popularity on hadoop clusters

Performance data and metadata of the computing operations at the CMS experiment are collected through a distributed monitoring infrastructure, currently relying on a traditional Oracle database system. This paper shows how to harness Big Data architectures in order to improve the throughput and the efficiency of such monitoring. A large set of operational data - user activities, job submissions, resources, file transfers, site efficiencies, software releases, network traffic, machine logs - is being injected into a readily available Hadoop cluster, via several data streamers. The collected metadata is further organized running fast arbitrary queries; this offers the ability to test several Map&Reduce-based frameworks and measure the system speed-up when compared to the original database infrastructure. By leveraging a quality Hadoop data store and enabling an analytics framework on top, it is possible to design a mining platform to predict dataset popularity and discover patterns and correlations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Deep Learning on Operational Facility Data Related to Large-Scale Distributed Area Scientific Workflows

Abstract—Distributed computing platforms provide a robust mechanism to perform large-scale computations by splitting the task and data among multiple locations, possibly located thousands of miles apart geographically. This distribution of resources can lead to benefits such as redundancy of data, engagement with scientific teams that involve a diverse group of domain experts distributed spatially around the globe. It allows scientists to share their expertise and data with everyone and achieve insights by deploying collective intelligence of entire team. However, this distributed computing comes with its associated problems such as rampant duplication of file transfers increasing congestion, long job completion times, unexpected site crashing, suboptimal data transfer rates, unpredictable reliability in a time range, overshooting congestion, suboptimal usage of storage elements. In addition, each sub-system becomes a potential failure node that can trigger system wide disruptions.

Machine Learning, Provenance, Time Series, Semanti↗
DOE OSTI2020

Resource Management for Processing Wide Area Data Streams on Supercomputers

Modern scientific instruments generate enormous amount of data. Typically, the data collected from the instruments are stored in one or more files that are then moved to a distant supercomputer for processing. The final results are sent back to the user. In order to make effective use of the time on expensive instruments, experimenters want to process the data as they are generated. They want to stream the data from instruments' memory directly to a supercomputer's memory for analysis. Since the compute nodes in a supercomputer are not connected directly to the wide area network, the data streams need to be passed through intermediate gateway nodes. As opposed to the best effort file transfers, data streaming applications require resources at a specific time for a specific period. In this paper, we present a system model for enabling data streaming through gateway nodes and an algorithm to efficiently allocate gateway node resources along with compute nodes. We evaluate the algorithm using real-world traces on the Chameleon Cloud. The results show that our system can schedule compute and gateway resources efficiently for streaming analysis.

data streaming↗
DOE OSTI2024

Enabling Low-Overhead HT-HPC Workflows at Extreme Scale using GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a versatile and powerful tool for process parallelization widely used in scientific computing. This paper demonstrates its effective application in high-performance computing (HPC) environments, particularly focusing on its scalability and efficiency in executing large-scale high-throughput high-performance computing (HT-HPC) workflows. Through real-world examples, we highlight GNU Parallel’s performance across various HPC workloads, including GPU computing, container-based workloads, and node-local NVMe storage. Our results on two leading supercomputers, OLCF’s Frontier and NERSC’s Perlmutter, showcase GNU Parallel’s rapid process dispatching ability and its capacity to maintain low overhead even at extreme scales. We explore GNU Parallel’s application in massive parallel file transfers using a scheduled Data Transfer Node (DTN) cluster, emphasizing its broad utility in diverse scientific workflows. Beyond its direct application as a viable workflow manager, GNU Parallel can be employed in conjunction with other workflow systems as a "last-mile" parallelizing driver and as a quick prototyping tool to design and extract parallel profiles from application executions. We then argue that the potential for GNU Parallel to transform workflow management at extreme scales is substantial, paving the way for more efficient and effective scientific discoveries.

Maheshwari, Ketan↗
DOE OSTI2016

Exascale Virtualized and Programmable Distributed Cyber Resource Control: Final Scientific Technical Report

Extreme-science drives the need for distributed exascale processing and communications that are carefully, yet flexibly, managed. Exponential growth of data for scientific simulations, experimental data, collaborative data analyses, remote visualization and GRID computing requirements of scientists in fields as diverse as high energy physics, climate change, genomics, fusion, synchrotron radiation, material science, medicine, and other scientific disciplines cannot be accommodated by simply applying existing transport protocols to faster pipes. Further, scientific challenges today demand diverse research teams, heightening the need for and increasing the complexity of collaboration. To address these issues within the network layer and physical layer, we have performed a number of research activities surrounding effective allocation and management of elastic optical network (EON) resources, particularly focusing on FlexGrid transponders. FlexGrid transponders support the opportunity to build Layer-1 connections at a wide range of bandwidths and to reconfigure them rapidly. The new flexibility supports complex new ways of using the physical layer that must be carefully managed and hidden from the scientist end-users. FlexGrid networks utilize flexible (or elastic) spectral bandwidths for each data link without using fixed wavelength grids. The flexibility in spectrum allocation brings many appealing features to network operations. Current networks are designed for the worst case impairments in transmission performance and the assigned spectrum is over-provisioned. In contrast, the FlexGrid networks can operate with the highest spectral efficiency and minimum bandwidth for the given traffic demand while meeting the minimum quality of transmission (QoT) requirement. Two primary focuses of our research are: (1) resource and spectrum allocation (RSA) for IP traffic over EONs, and (2) RSA for cross-domain optical networks. Previous work concentrates primarily on large file transfers within a single domain. Adding support for IP traffic changes the nature of the RSA problem: instead of choosing to accept or deny each request for network support, IP traffic is inherently elastic and thus lends itself to a bandwidth maximization formulation. We developed a number of algorithms that could be easily deployed within existing and new FlexGrid networks, leading to networks that better support scientific collaboration. Cross-domain RSA research is essential to support large-scale FlexGrid networks, since configuration information is generally not shared or coordinated across domains. The results presented here are in their early stages. They are technically feasible and practical, but still require coordination among organizations and equipment owners and a higher-layer framework for managing network requests.

42 ENGINEERING↗