Authors: Anna Alber and Timothy Wright

The HUBzero platform does a good job of bringing users and modeling tools together. However, hubs are generally intended to deploy tools of modest means, with input and output data not readily shared across user accounts. In answer to this issue, we have extended HUBzero along two fronts: first, to run the sophisticated openModeller desktop tool, and, second, to provide seamless access to external Network File System (NFS) drive space where hub users may store and manage input and output data. We designed our solution so that data may be shared or kept private with no significant administrative overhead. As a result our test hub allows scientists to converge in one place where they can run the openModeller tool and choose to share or keep private their input/output data files. Moreover, our approach to openModeller applies equally well to any sophisticated modeling tool that can be operated on a hub. For particularly large modeling efforts it makes sense to move our openModeller jobs off of HUBzero; to this end, we have begun a separate project that will embed an interface into HUBzero. This new interface will permit users to submit openModeller jobs to a remote server, which also share's the hub's NFS space.

Anna Alber is a Research Programmer at the University of Notre Dame Center for Research Computing. She is a member of Cyberinfrastructure Group where she is involved in web application development, HUBzero administration and computational tool development. She has MS in Physics and worked both in academia and industry.

Timothy Wright

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Anna Alber (2011), "Integrating Modeling Tools with a Shared Data Architecture on the HUBzero Platform," https://help.hubzero.org/resources/411.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. Hubbub 2011