Celebrating a collaboration success: NeSI, REANNZ and Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research
Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research are in the final stages of bringing online their Globus endpoint, which will see them join NeSI's National Data Transfer Platform and enable enhanced capabilities for their researchers. This development has been the result of a truly collaborative effort across the teams of NeSI, Manaaki Whenua (MWLR), and REANNZ.
The REANNZ software and network engineers have been providing support to get the infrastructure installed and configured, continuing the work done by REANNZ engineers over the previous year to upgrade MWLR’s network to 10Gbps external capability, and supporting the deployment of a REANNZ managed ScienceDMZ on the network.
This also marks the fifth managed endpoint to be added to the Data Transfer Platform since it launched in 2018. Once operational, the new endpoint will enable high-speed data transfer to NeSI’s Māui and Mahuika HPC systems hosted at NIWA, and link MWLR to Globus’ worldwide data transfer network.
“We’re pleased to welcome Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research onto the Data Transfer Platform,” says Brian Flaherty, Data Services Product Manager at NeSI. “By expanding the number of connected research institutions within New Zealand, this allows for wider support of workflows nationally, as well as between international collaborators, research instruments, and compute facilities.”
MWLR Network & Systems Administrator Kim Klinkhamer praised the efforts of those involved in getting to this point.
“A huge thank you goes to Jose from NeSI and Vlad from REANNZ for fixing the final stumbling blocks of getting Manaaki Whenua connected,” he said. "Thanks also go to Michael Speth who worked on MWLR's Linux user set up, Osei Amoafo for configuration of the MWLR network, and Chris Bell who supported the team with their DMZ firewall configuration."
Science Team Leader Nick Spencer added that not only does the endpoint bring MWLR in line with industry standards, but it will also improve collaboration between researchers.
“The endpoint is going to make it much easier for MWLR scientists and researchers to access information via NeSI. Suddenly data is not such an impediment in terms of being able to access large volumes of it,” he said.
This coordinated project has been continuing to make progress during this challenging time of increasing workloads and social distancing, that has called for new and flexible ways of working together with ongoing support given behind the scenes. MWLR, NeSI and REANNZ have demonstrated that the research communities in New Zealand are continuing to collaborate and adapt to this changing situation and are working together to enable research and science in New Zealand. With a Globus endpoint fully online, utilising and testing transfers will soon be underway.
