technical:globus:mills

Globus Endpoints: Mills

The Globus file transfer service is a means to copy your important data off the Mills cluster to other Globus-enabled systems around the world.

All Mills users can make use of the Globus endpoint. The endpoint is read only: data cannot be copied to Mills, only copied from it. All three major file systems are presented on the endpoint:

  • /lustre/work/<workgroup> (workgroup storage directories)
  • /home/<uid-number> (user home directories)
  • /archive/<workgroup> (workgroup archival directories)

Data is provided to the Globus environment by a Data Transfer Node (DTN). The Mills DTN is currently connected at 10 Gbps to the same network infrastructure servicing the Farber and Caviness login nodes. In the future it may be connected to a higher-speed network to facilitate faster data movement.

Start by navigating to the Globus web application in your web browser. If you have previously logged-in, you will be taken directly to the dashboard. Otherwise do one of the following:

  • Click the "Globus ID to sign in" link if you have a Globus ID that you use for Globus services.
  • Choose the University of Delaware as your organization and click the Continue button; on the next page enter your UDelNet Id and Password and continue on to the dashboard.

Click the Endpoints button on the left to view your configured Globus endpoints. In the search box at the top of the page, enter "Mills" and click the magnifying glass icon:

Mills endpoints listing

The "UofD Mills Cluster — Home, Work, and Archive Storage" endpoint should be visible. Click the green "power-button-with-chasing-arrows" button to activate this endpoint; you will be asked to authenticate using your Mills username and password:

Connect to Mills endpoint

If successful the list of files in your home directory (where /~/ is a shortcut to /storage/home/<uid#>) should appear:

Mills endpoint file listing

The other file systems can be found by navigating to the /storage/ path either by

  • entering "/storage/" in the field labelled Path
  • OR by clicking the parent directory button to navigate to the parent directory, then double-clicking the directory named "storage" in that list
Entering a path in the Path field is preferable to clicking through the directory hierarchy. Listing the contents of directories containing many files/directories — like /home and /lustre/scratch — requires extensive communication between Globus and our DTN.

The resulting file list should look like this:

listing of /storage/ directory

Mills paths are easily translated to Globus endpoint paths as:

File systemMills pathGlobus endpoint path
User home directory/home/<uid-number>/storage/home/<uid-number>
Workgroup storage/lustre/work/<workgroup>/storage/lustre/work/<workgroup>
Workgroup archival/archive/<workgroup>/storage/archive/<workgroup>

A user can determine his/her UID number (<uid-number>) by logging-in to Mills and issuing the id command:

$ id -u
1001

A list of the workgroups (<workgroup>) to which a user belongs can be generated by the workgroup command:

$ workgroup --query=workgroups
 1049  ccei_biomass
 1063  ccm_gillespi
 1001  it_nss

The Globus web application is used to create a data copy from the Mills endpoint to another endpoint. First, the destination endpoint must also be activated and displayed in the web application. From there creating a copy operation is as simple as dragging a file or folder from the Mills listing to the listing for the other endpoint. Please see the Globus documentation for additional details about initiating transfers.

  • technical/globus/mills.txt
  • Last modified: 2020-03-02 16:05
  • by frey