Persistent data staging services for data intensive in-situ scientific workflows

Abstract

Scientific simulation workflows executing on very large scale computing systems are essential modalities for scientific investigation. The increasing scales and resolution of these simulations provide new opportunities for accurately modeling complex natural and engineered phenomena. However, the increasing complexity necessitates managing, transporting, and processing unprecedented amounts of data, and as a result, researchers are increasingly exploring data-staging and in-situ workflows to reduce data movement and data-related overheads. However, as these workflows become more dynamic in their structures and behaviors, data staging and in-situ solutions must evolve to support new requirements. In this paper, we explore how the service-oriented concept can be applied to extreme-scale in-situ workflows. Specifically, we explore persistent data staging as a service and present the design and implementation of DataSpaces as a Service, a service-oriented data staging framework. We use a dynamically coupled fusion simulation workflow to illustrate the capabilities of this framework and evaluate its performance and scalability.