Leveraging Your Local Resources and National Cyberinfrastructure Resources without Tears

Abstract

Compute resources for conducting research inhabit a wide range from researchers' personal computers, servers in labs, campus clusters and condos, regional resource-sharing models, and national cyberinfrastructure. Researchers agree that there are not enough resources available on a broad scale, and significant barriers exist for getting analyses moved from smaller- to larger-scale cyberinfrastructure. The XSEDE Campus Bridging program disseminates a several tools that assist researchers and campus IT administrators in reducing barriers to the effective use of national cyberinfrastructure for research. Tools for data management, job submission and steering, best practices for building and administering clusters, and common documentation and training activities all support a flexible environment that allows cyberinfrastructure to be as simple to utilize as a plug-and-play peripheral. In this paper and the accompanying poster we provide an overview of Campus Bridging, including specific challenges and solutions to the problem of making the computerized parts of research easier. We focus particularly on tools that facilitate management of campus computing clusters and integration of such clusters with the national cyberinfrastructure.