Category: Services

WACS breakage: 28 March 2020

Posted on by Ajay

During the early hours of Saturday 28 March 2020, the West Africa Cable System (WACS) submarine fibre optic cable that connects South African research to Europe suffered a sub-sea break. Fortunately our network has sufficient redundant capacity that this break should not affect the majority of universities and research councils

SANReN Session at e-Research Conference – 16 April 2019

Posted on by Ajay

SANReN is presenting a 1/2 day workshop at the eResearch Africa 2019 conference at the University of Cape Town on Tuesday, 16 April 2019.

Please register at: http://www.eresearch.ac.za/era/registration

SANReN are looking for researchers/scientists/IT facilities of Research Institutes in South Africa who need to transfer big data sets from/to one or more external sources to/from their institutions. These include to and from international and National sites.

The aim of this 1⁄2 day workshop is to help South African researchers to transfer large data sets by using the SANReN Data Transfer Pilot service or by setting up their own hardware and data transfer tools.The following will be covered:

  • Networking challenges when transferring large data sets
  • Data Transfer Architecture: The Science DMZ Model
  • Large Data Transfer tools: Globus
  • Network monitoring tools: Perfsonar
  • SANReN Data Transfer Pilot service Proof of Concept: Progress and Results

Any queries, please email pert@sanren.ac.za

New instance of Filesender – a secure service to share large files with anyone

Posted on by Ajay

SANReN has implemented the latest version of Filesender, a web based application that allows authenticated users to securely and easily send arbitrarily large files to other users.

Below are the guidelines for accessing the service and what values it adds to your day to day operations.

What problem does the service solve?
You need to send a file larger than a couple of megabytes to someone and the e-mail comes back indicating: “attachment too big” or “mailbox too full”, that is where FileSender comes in handy.

How do I use the service?
Upon logging in, you are presented with a user-friendly interface. You can set the file to be available for download for a certain period so that it automatically gets removed when the file reaches its expiry date. You have an option to drag and drop your file when uploading it to the application. You also have an option to get a link to the file after uploading it or send it to a recipient as an e-mail.

The service is integrated with the South African Identity Federation, which provides a pool of institutions you can authenticate from to use the service. If your institution is not registered on SAFIRE as yet, you can login with a social media account if you are from an eligible institution. 

Where do I access the service?

You can access the service at https://filesender.sanren.ac.za

Drop us an e-mail at sysadmin@sanren.ac.za for any queries regarding the service.

SANReN presents “Moving more data, faster (yours!) – the science DMZ as enabler”

Posted on by Ajay

At the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) National Research Data Workshop 2018, 45 delegates were educated in the latest practices for transferring large scientific/research datasets. These include: the science DMZ network design pattern, data transfer nodes (DTNs), perfSONAR for measurement and monitoring as well as specialised data transfer tools. The presentation was made by Kasandra Pillay, who also gave an overview of SANReN’s data transfer service pilot and DTN deployment to delegates as possible users of the service.

Presentation: Moving more data faster (pdf)

For more information please contact: engage@sanren.ac.za

 

SA NREN Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs) pilot

Posted on by Ajay

Last year we issued a call asking “Can we help you move your data sets?” to find potential use cases for our new data transfer service (see flyer).

We have since set up three Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs) in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria that are now available to the South African Research and Education community to assist in data transfer movement nationally and internationally as a pilot project on a trial basis.

If you would like to know more about this project, make use of these DTNs to transfer large datasets to and from your institution or know of a project that could benefit from utilising this service, please email engage@sanren.ac.za

For those that already completed our investigation survey, thank you for doing so, as this helped us motivate for the pilot project. Please do reach out to us again if you are still interested.

SANReN PERT Team (pert@sanren.ac.za)