Petrel: A Programmatically Accessible Research Data Service

We report on our experiences deploying and operating Petrel, a data service designed to support science projects that must organize and distribute large quantities of data. Building on a high-performance 3.2 PB parallel file system and embedded in Argonne National Laboratory's 100+ Gbps network fabric, Petrel leverages Science DMZ concepts and Globus APIs to provide application scientists with a high-speed, highly connected, and programmatically controllable data store. We describe Petrel's design, implementation, and usage and give representative examples to illustrate the many different ways in which scientists have employed the system.