CC-NIE Integration: Creation of an Institutional Cyberinfrastructure to Enable Researcher-Oriented, Federated Environment for Large, Collaborative Science Projects

University Of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

Wide spread adoption of cyberinfrastructure advances has been a challenge to researchers mainly due to the traditional cyberinfrastructure equipment, policies and engineering practices at campuses. This University of Missouri (MU) project enables a 100 GB connection extending across the state of Missouri from St. Louis through Columbia to Kansas City directly on the I2 Innovation Network backbone. It includes wide-area network experimentation to seamlessly integrate MU's cyberinfrastructure and Science DMZ with a remote campus (Ohio State University) cyberinfrastructure. It also involves integrating advanced technologies (e.g., 100Gbps connectivity, perfSONAR, OpenFlow, RoCE/iWARP) relevant to the use cases of diverse researchers at MU and OSU. Building CI in this environment requires authentication, authorization, and policy-limited access to resources. The project engages all three elements of Internet2's Innovation Network: Software Defined Networking (SDN), OpenFlow and Federated Identity. The University of Missouri is modifying its existing cyberinfrastructure to accommodate advanced tools enabled by OpenFlow and SDN. The existing science DMZ is compatible with the Innovation Network Science DMZ. MU is also customizing Shibboleth Federated Identity Management services to provide fine-grained authorization and access to specific resources. The entitlement server implements policy that controls the bandwidth consumed by individual users or programs. The project broadly disseminates research results through publication on the project web site, disseminated through various regional and national conferences, and journal articles. Open source software from the project will also be made available.