Maximizing the performance of scientific data transfer by optimizing the interface between parallel file systems and advanced research networks

The large amount of time spent transferring experimental data in fields such as genomics is hampering the ability of scientists to generate new knowledge. Often, computer hardware is capable of faster transfers but sub-optimal transfer software and configurations are limiting performance. This work seeks to serve as a guide to identifying the optimal configuration for performing genomics data transfers. A wide variety of tests narrow in on the optimal data transfer parameters for parallel data streaming across Internet2 and between two CloudLab clusters loading real genomics data onto a parallel file system. The best throughput was found to occur with a configuration using GridFTP with at least 5 parallel TCP streams with a 16 MiB TCP socket buffer size to transfer to/from 4-8 BeeGFS parallel file system nodes connected by InfiniBand.