The GFFS offers scientists a simplified means through which they can
interact with and share resources. Currently, many scientists struggle to
exploit distributed infrastructures because they are complex, unreliable,
and require the use of unfamiliar tools. For many scientists, such obstacles
interfere with their research; for others, these obstacles render their
research impossible. It is therefore essential to lower the barriers to
using distributed infrastructures.
The first principle of the GFFS is simplicity. Every researcher is familiar
with the directory-based paradigm of interaction; the GFFS exploits this
familiarity by providing a global shared namespace. The namespace appears to
the user as files and directories so that the scientist can easily organize
and interact with a variety of resources types. Resources can include
compute clusters, running jobs, directory trees in local file systems,
groups, as well as storage resources at geographically dispersed locations.
Once mapped into the shared namespace, resources can be accessed by existing
applications in a location-transparent fashion, i.e., as if they were local.
In this talk I will present the GFFS, its functionality, its motivation, as
well as typical use cases. I will demonstrate many of its capabilities,
including: 1) how to securely share data, storage, and computational
resources with collaborators; 2) how to access data at the centers from
campus and vice versa; 3) how to create shared compute queues with
collaborators; and 4) how to create jobs and interact with them once
started.
