Globus simplifies data sharing with collaborators

The Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF) is a central facility which hosts clusters for high-performance computing (HPC), and supports the computational and data science needs of the Max Planck Society, Germany’s most successful research organization. MPCDF provides many services, including Data Services for large scale data analysis, transfer and collaboration, backup and archive.

MPCDF has been using Globus as a production (DataHub) service for data transfer since 2017. Globus was implemented because it allows for fast, reliable and secure large scale data transfer. Plus it provides researchers with a nice user experience through its “fire and forget” capabilities, where transferring large amounts of data through a point and click interface is trouble-free, even for datasets that are many GBs or even TBs in size.

Several projects that the MPCDF are involved in use Globus for large scale data transfers to and from the HPC systems at MPCDF. Projects such as the Fotothek of the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and the Virgo Consortium, represented by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics are just two examples.

Now as international and multi-organization collaborations are becoming more commonplace, and datasets are growing exponentially, MPCDF decided to expand its use of Globus by subscribing to the Globus premium service. MPCDF recently deployed Globus collections and enabled Globus sharing, which gives researchers a simple, easy-to-use method of data sharing with external collaborators around the world.