Terrell Russell, Ph.D.

Executive Director, iRODS Consortium

November 16-21, 2025

Supercomputing 2025

St. Louis, MO

Our Membership

Abbreviated History

We're 30 this year!

• From science project to hardened code
• From philosophy to platform to product

Open Source

• Multiple releases
• Feature consolidation
• New members
• Market clarity
• Partnerships

What is iRODS?

Policy-Driven Open Source Virtual Filesystem

• C++ client-server architecture
• Storage abstraction, metadata catalog, and rule engine
• iRODS Protocol and RPC API
• BSD-3 Licensed

Distributed

• Runs on a laptop, a cluster, on premises, or geographically distributed

Data Centric & Metadata Driven

• Insulate both your users and your data from the infrastructure

Where is iRODS used?

• Research, Commercial, and Governmental Organizations

• Largest userbase is in Europe
  • Strict data protection laws
  • Data sovereignty
  • Federation with other entities for collaboration

• iRODS is designed for long-term management needs - 100+ years
  • Keeps your infrastructure flexible

iRODS in Production

• Corporations: Bayer, Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, Dow, Aptiv, Syngenta
• Research Centers: Wellcome Sanger, CRG Barcelona, Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), Max Planck, GFZ, Earlham Institute, ASTRON, CMCC, MCL Austria
• Archives: BAnQ, Library of Congress, BnF
• Medical Research Centers: Sickkids.ca, Maastricht UMC, Amsterdam UMC, RIVM, NKI, CUBI BIH
• Universities: KU Leuven, Utrecht, Arizona, Groningen, UNC, Penn State, Duke, Radboud, UCL
• Supercomputing Centers: RIKEN, KEK, TACC, CINES, CSIR, LRZ, EUDAT, IT4Innovations, SURF, CINECA, CC-IN2P3, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, KISTI
• Federal Agencies / Labs: NIEHS, NASA, NOAA, Frederick National Laboratory, UKHSA

iRODS 5.0

• New process model
• Service manager communication
• Unified configuration file
• Modernized TLS
• Access time tracking
• Delay rule locking
• New GenQuery parser

And also...

Client Libraries

• Java, Python, C++, Go, Typescript, R

Client Applications

• HTTP API w/ OpenID Connect, S3 API, NFSRODS
• K8s CSI, Fuse, iBridges, Davrods, Metalnx
• Cyberduck, MCP Server, Zone Management Tool

Protocol Plumbing - Presenting iRODS as other Protocols

It is important for an iRODS Zone to be approachable, accessible, and interoperable with as many other systems and tools as possible.

Interactions and operations handled through these layers provide the full policy enforcement, permission model, and storage abstraction as the native protocol. All at the same time.

Storage Tiering

Impact

Deployment Flexibility

Areas of active collaboration

• Metadata templates and validation
• Metrics, visibility, forecasting
• AI integrations
• Policy based safety / compliance
• Managed services

Thank you!

Booth #4424