Globus

What is Globus?

Globus is a robust data management platform designed to facilitate the secure and efficient transfer of large datasets across institutions and collaborators. Globus is meant to replace more traditional styles of data upload that institutions may use, such as scp, rsync, or sftp , with a modern and easy-to-use web interface.

How does Globus work?

Globus has two important concepts:

• Collections

  • Collections are locations where data are stored.

  • For example, the "MIT ORCD Engaging Collection" is the collection that corresponds to the data stored on the MIT Engaging cluster. The "BMC-LAB3 Guest Collection" is the collection that corresponds to the data stored on the BioMicro Center BMC-LAB3 storage host.

  • Different institutions use Globus, and each institutions may have their own set of collections. Gaining access to a collection is dependent on the institution which manages them.

• Transfers

  • Transfers are the movement of data between two collections.

  • Since collections can be inter-institutional, you can use Globus to transfer data from your institution's collections to a partner institution's collections, assuming you've been given the correct permissions from both institutions.

  • Transfers can be broken into two categories:

    • A one-time transfer, where you copy data from one collection to another collection

    • A scheduled transfer, where you schedule recurring transfers of data from one collection to another collection

Transfer Requests

If you require assistance with moving data to or from an external collaborator and local KI storage, we can help to facilitate that. This is the information that we'll need from you:

1. Whether the transfer is incoming or outgoing.

2. The volume (size, number of files) of data being moved.

3. What is the requested delivery date? This should be at least two weeks in advance in order to accommodate for network and filesystem performance.

Incoming Transfers

1. Where does the incoming data need to go (e.g., /net/bmc-lab2/...)?

2. Who will be needing access to write to the specified path? This can be a member of your team or your collaborator's team. For information on logging in to the Globus platform, please see above.

Outgoing Transfers

1. Which storage host is the outgoing data located on, and what is the absolute path to it (e.g., /net/bmc-lab2/...)? This will depend on your lab association.

2. Does the destination institution use Globus? If so, has the destination Globus collection been created yet? If not, the data can be transferred to local storage using Globus Connect Personal, which will need to be configured prior to the transfer.

3. Who will be needing access to read from the specified path? This can be a member of your team or your collaborator's team. For information on logging in to the Globus platform, please see above.

For additional assistance or questions, please reach out to [email protected].