The FLowell project accelerates a set of data-driven science projects at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) by enhancing campus cyberinfrastructure (CI) with a software defined 10Gbps science network, deploying an advanced and fully network (SDN) integrated computing/storage rack at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), and connecting researchers labs at 10Gbps rate to the MGHPCC as well as external collaborators for highly efficient data sharing and transfer. The UML campus has seen a tremendous growth of data intensive research in many disciplines such as atmospheric science, network science, biomedical science and data management. To fulfill the data transfer needs from these projects, there is a strong call to address the slow network access speed, constraints on network management policies, and inefficient connectivity to MGHPCC and other external computing/storage resources. The UML campus network embraces software defined network technologies and the dedicated science Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) concept, which remove the bottlenecks for transferring large datasets. Layer 2 software defined control, perfSONAR (PERFormance Service Oriented Network monitoring ARchitecture) based measurement, and data transfer nodes are leveraged to enable state-of-the-art network control and operations. FLowell is an excellent network environment for PIs to evaluate and take advantage of novel networking technologies and welcomes a broader participation from other researchers. Based on the ongoing collaboration between the PI and campus IT and the pilot deployment of OpenFlow switches, the science teams, IT department, vendors, and MGHPCC personnel form a strong partnership to establish the advanced infrastructure and accelerate data centric knowledge discovery in a global context.
