File-server Access
Offering high-quality, high-bandwidth file management capabilities to access, manage, and manipulate large digital collections
To perform certain types of work, scholars and researchers need specialized remote access that permits them to manipulate large data files as easily and securely as they would files on their desktops. This capability requires an enormous amount of disk storage space, as well as unfettered access to large-scale, high-performance distributed computing networks.
USCDR File-Server Services
The USC Digital Repository (USCDR) can provide the hardware, software, storage systems, and workflow processes necessary for clients who need to manage and access large digital collections. The USCDR offers high-speed, high-performance disk storage on a short- or long-term basis, allowing customers to commit to no more than the disk space that is needed at any given time. Disk access is available for Macintosh, Windows, or UNIX platforms.
The USCDR can help deliver a powerful cloud computing workspace for researchers and staff who need to upload, manage, or transfer large working files.
Utilizing the resources of the USC Center for High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC), the USCDR can rapidly manage and process large files that ordinary computer systems cannot easily handle. Through the USC network, the repository can ensure access—through the high-speed networks of Internet2 and National LambdaRail—to over a hundred high-performance research and education networks worldwide, allowing researchers at institutions all over the world to access, manage, and manipulate large digital files remotely.
Computing Power via HPCC
The USCDR provides disk storage space and file-server access through the HPCC’s high-performance computing environment. USCDR systems utilize nodes within HPCC’s condominium-style computing environment, which is maintained and monitored around the clock by HPCC and USCDR staff.
USC’s HPCC cluster is one of the fastest academic supercomputers in the U.S., comprising two Linux clusters with more than 24 terabytes of combined memory and more than 490 terabytes of temporary disk storage. Each cluster is connected by a bidirectional, low-latency Myrinet fiber network, which allows it to process massive production jobs that require high-speed communications among computational elements. In the fall of 2010, HPCC achieved a benchmark of 94.22 teraflops, or 94.22 trillion floating-point operations per second.
Access to High-Performance Networks
The USCDR can be accessed via multiple 10-gigabit interfaces to the USC campus network, allowing the high-speed transfer of massive amounts of data across USC’s network and the Los Nettos regional network that is administratively housed at USC. In its 22nd year of operation, Los Nettos provides redundant bandwidth to consortium members USC, the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Loyola Marymount University, and the Claremont Colleges. Los Nettos is also a participant in Pacific Wave, an international Internet exchange that facilitates efficient and low-cost data transfer between other major national and international networks and supports a wide variety of advanced science and engineering applications.