Executive Overview

Jason Coposky

@jason_coposky

Executive Director, iRODS Consortium

Executive Overview

What is iRODS

Distributed - runs on a laptop, a cluster, on premises or geographically distributed

Open Source - BSD-3 Licensed, install it today and try before you buy

Metadata Driven & Data Centric - Insulate both your users and your data from your infrastructure

iRODS as the Integration Layer

iRODS Core Competencies

The underlying technology categorized into four areas

Data Virtualization

Combine various distributed storage technologies into a Unified Namespace

Existing file systems
Cloud storage
On premises object storage
Archival storage systems

iRODS provides a logical view into the complex physical representation of your data, distributed geographically, and at scale.

Projection of the Physical into the Logical

Logical Path

Physical Path(s)

Data Discovery

Attach metadata to any first class entity within the iRODS Zone

Data Objects
Collections
Users
Storage Resources
The Namespace

iRODS provides automated and user-provided metadata which makes your data and infrastructure more discoverable, operational and valuable.

Metadata Everywhere

Workflow Automation

Integrated scripting language which is triggered by any operation within the framework

Authentication
Storage Access
Database Interaction
Network Activity
Extensible RPC API

The iRODS rule engine provides the ability to capture real world policy as computer actionable rules which may allow, deny, or add context to operations within the system.

Dynamic Policy Enforcement

restrict access
log for audit and reporting
provide additional context
send a notification

The iRODS rule may:

Dynamic Policy Enforcement

A single API call expands to many plugin operations all of which may invoke policy enforcement

Authentication
Database
Storage
Network
Rule Engine
Microservice
RPC API

Plugin Interfaces:

Secure Collaboration

iRODS allows for collaboration across administrative boundaries after deployment

No need for common infrastructure
No need for shared funding
Affords temporary collaborations

iRODS provides the ability to federate namespaces across organizations without pre-coordinated funding or effort.

iRODS as a Service Interface

Federation - Shared Data and Services

Ingest to Institutional repository

As data matures and reaches a broader community, data management policy must also evolve to meet these additional requirements.

iRODS Capabilities

Automated Ingest - Landing Zone

Automated Ingest - Filesystem Scanning

Storage Tiering

Deployment Patterns

Data to Compute

Compute to Data

Filesystem Synchronization

Data to Compute

Compute to Data

The Data Management Model

Use Cases

iRODS

The Wellcome Sanger Institute

Sanger - Replication

Data preferentially placed on resource servers in the green data center (fallback to red)
Data replicated to the other room.
Checksums applied
Green and red centers both used for read access.

Sanger - Metadata

attribute: library

attribute: total_reads

attribute: type

attribute: lane

attribute: is_paired_read

attribute: study_accession_number

attribute: library_id

attribute: sample_accession_number

attribute: sample_public_name

attribute: manual_qc

attribute: tag