August 2011 User of the Month: Greg Daues
August 01, 2011 | Paul Dave
For August User of the Month, I’m pleased to announce we have selected Greg Daues from NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications).
Who he is: Greg is a research programmer at NCSA who has been using the graphical interface available on Globus Online for moving large datasets between XD/TeraGrid sites and local servers to support processing of simulated astronomical images for 2 main projects: The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Data Management project, and the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Data Management project.
Why we picked him: Greg has made transfers totaling over 97TBs of data (and more than 22 million files) since April 2011 -- he is among the highest of all users in terms of both volume and size. He has done a great job testing the system with his use and, with an average file size of only 4.5MB, his use case is a great example of how Globus Online can handle large numbers of small files in one transfer. Some of Greg’s most impressive stats: His average transfer rate is around 500 Mbps, and his highest rate to date is 2.2 Gbps! His largest single transfer was 3.7TB.
Greg also thinks beyond just his initial usage of GO: He plans to fully integrate and optimize the use of Globus Online within his project workflows; in particular, the DES and Open Science Grid (OSG) User Support teams are investigating the integration of GO into the DESDM data access framework and are actively working with the GO team in the implementation of new features and functionality and performance testing.
Two other reasons Greg is a great choice: (1) July is the month of XSEDE’s official launch and Greg is one of our most active users from TeraGrid; and (2) his projects not only move large amounts of data but are scientifically fascinating! His work with the Dark Energy Survey “probes the origin of the accelerating universe and helps uncover the nature of dark energy by precisely measuring the 14-billion-year history of cosmic expansion” according to their site.
Congratulations Greg!