External Cyberinfrastructure and Computational Resources

two hands coming together with pieces

These external resources can provide faculty researchers with greater computation power as well as options for high-speed data transfer. The resources maintained at CWRU is of medium size in comparison with other HPC/supercomputer resources and commercial providers. While our resource serves well for many research uses, it is not of adequate size to handle larger computational tasks that may require several hundred or several thousand simultaneous processors. For those larger jobs, there are other resources available to CWRU researchers that are both free and commercially available.

Please contact UTech Research Computing team with any questions regarding these resources. Our team can help provide a solution that fits your needs.

  • ​​​​​​ACCESS - The Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS), an open scientific discovery infrastructure funded by the National Science Foundation to support computationally and data intensive research. Currently ACCESS supports more than a dozen super-computers and high-end visualization and data analysis resources. ACCESS's main resource locations are in UT Austin (TACC), San Diego (UCSD), Pittsburgh (PSC), and Indiana University. ACCESS’s integrated, comprehensive suite of services connects with other high-end facilities and campus-based resources, serving as the foundation for a national computing ecosystem.

 

ACCESS provides to researchers:

    • Free allocations to run jobs
    • Computationally and data intensive research support

    • Several computational scientists with experience in a wide range of research domains

    • Training to maximize your productivity in the XSEDE ecosystem

    • Local campus champions to discuss your research needs

 

ACCESS might be right for you if your research requires:

  • Several 1000s of processors and Terabytes of memory

    • Encompassing several computational scientists with experience in a wide range of research domains

 

  • OSC - The Ohio Supercomputer Center empowers a wide array of groundbreaking innovation and economic development activities in the fields of bioscience, advanced materials, data exploitation and other areas of state focus by providing a powerful high performance computing, research and educational cyberinfrastructure for a diverse statewide/regional constituency. University PIs can receive resource allotments through an online application form.

 

OSC provides to researchers:

    • Low cost approved allocations to run jobs

    • computationally and data intensive research support

 

OSC might be right for you if your research requires:

    • Several 1000s of processors and Terabytes of memory

    • Encompassing several computational scientists with experience in a wide range of research domains

  • GENI - The Global Environment for Network Innovations provides a virtual laboratory for networking and distributed systems research and education. It is well suited for exploring networks at scale, thereby promoting innovations in network science, security, services and applications.

 

GENI provides to researchers:

    • Compute resources from locations around the United States

    • Connect compute resources using Layer 2 networks in topologies best suited to their experiments

    • Control how network switches in their experiment handle traffic flows

    • Connect compute resources using Layer 3 and above protocols by installing protocol software in their compute resources and by providing flow controllers for their switches

    • Install custom software or even custom operating systems on these compute resources

 

GENI might be right for you if your research requires:

    • A large-scale experiment infrastructure. GENI can potentially provide you with more resources than is typically found in any one laboratory. GENI gives you access to hundreds of widely distributed resources including compute resources such as virtual machines and “bare-machines”, and network resources such as links, switches and WiMax base stations.

    • Non-IP connectivity across resources. GENI allows you to set up Layer 2 connections between compute resources and run your own Layer 3 and above protocols connecting these resources.

    • Deep programmability. With GENI you can program not only the end hosts of your experimental network but also the switches in the core of your network. This allows you to experiment with novel network layer protocols or with novel IP-routing algorithms.

    • Reproducibility. You can get exclusive access to certain GENI resources including CPU resources and network resources. This gives you control over your experiment’s environment and hence the ability for you and others to repeat experiments under identical or very similar conditions.

    • Instrumentation and measurement tools. GENI has two instrumentation and measurement systems that you can use to instrument your experiments. These systems provide probes for active and passive measurements, measurement data storage and tools for visualizing and analyzing measurement data.

 

Globus (www.globus.org/what-we-do) is a secure, reliable research data management service. With Globus, subscribers can move, share, publish & discover data via a single interface – whether your files live on a supercomputer, lab cluster, tape archive, public cloud or your laptop, you can manage this data from anywhere, using your existing identities, via just a web browser.​ Globus also provides a platform for application integration and gateway development leveraging advanced identity management, single sign-on, search and authorization capabilities.

Globus provides to researchers:

    • Efficient and seamless means to transfer, move, share, publish, and discover data

Globus might be right for you if your research requires:

    • Dealing with data that is Terabyte or Petabyte in size  

    • Data sharing with other collaborators

Who manages these External Resources?

  • External resources are guided and managed by the individual entities as described in the sites linked above. CWRU has affiliations with, but does not manage or oversee these resources. For XSEDE and OSC, we have Campus Champions that can help explain about their respective resources and how to access them.

How can I get information about these External Resources?

  • Contact hpc-support@case.edu with any questions regarding External Resources. RCCI staff will assist to the best of our ability.

Where can I find more information about UTech Research Computing and the HPC?