Accessing HPSS - GridFTP clients

Currently only the archive.nersc.gov system is capable of handling GridFTP transfers to HPSS. It accomplishes this by using a special GSI enabled pftp server. Data transfers are multi-threaded, but are handled with a single FTP server. Improvements are planned.

The pftp server handling GridFTP transfers is garchive.nersc.gov. GridFTP clients must authenticate/transfer to this server to send data to archive.nersc.gov.

There are numerous GridFTP clients available that can access the archive.nersc.gov system currently. Several of these clients are already available on the NERSC computational systems. The most common are globus-url-copy and uberftp (from NCSA).

The major benefits of GridFTP clients over other HPSS clients are their ability to accept grid credentials that you may already have, and their mutli-threaded transfer capability. They are well known for making optimal utilization of available network bandwidth and performing well for WAN data transfers. They can do third-party transfers, where you launch the transfer from a low-capability workstation for a transfer that occurs between two supercomputers. Grid clients require additional software for this, but can also launch and forget or retry on failure.

For details on using GridFTP, see grid transfer instructions.

Obtaining a grid credential