Alan King

Research Software Developer

iRODS Consortium

July 14, 2021

Data Aware Student Visit

Virtual Event

iRODS Overview

iRODS Overview

The iRODS Consortium

Our Mission

• Continuous Improvement
• Grow the Community
• Standardization
• Show value to our Membership

The iRODS Consortium

Our History

• Founded in 2013 by RENCI, DICE, and DDN
• Accepted the code base in 2014
• Forty one releases of iRODS to date

Our Membership

Consortium

Member

Consortium

Member

Consortium

Member

Consortium

Member

Consortium

Member

Why use iRODS?

People need a solution for:

• Managing large amounts of data across various storage technologies
• Controlling access to data
• Searching their data quickly and efficiently
• Automation

The larger the organization, the more they need software like iRODS.

iRODS as the Integration Layer

The iRODS Data Management Model

Core Competencies

Policy

Capabilities

Patterns

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.

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.

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.

• Packaged and supported solutions
• Require configuration not code
• Derived from the majority of use cases observed in the user community

iRODS Capabilities

The Data Management Model

Questions?