Overview of how Montana State has engaged with the National Research Platform using limited staff and financial resources to achieve exponential benefit. Presented at Consortium for Educational Networking in California (CENIC) annual meeting in March of 2018

1. Scaling Approaches to the National Research Platform:
Creating a Rising Tide for All Campuses & Researchers
Jerry Sheehan,
Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. Montana State University
CENIC Annual Conference, March 7, 2018

2. Overview of Presentation
I. Lean Cyberinfrastructure (LeanCI) and the PRP
II. Strategies and Lessons Learned for Scaling with Limited Personnel and
Financial Resources
a) Team of Teams
b) Integration
c) Working with the Community

3. LeanCI and Montana State
• Montana State
• Land-grant University, $100M research,
campus is about 20K people.
• No history of sustained CI investment,
limited personnel 2FTE.
• What is LeanCI?
• An agile approach to creating the most
value for researchers with limited
institutional resources.
• Why did we join the PRP as an
UNFUNDED partner?
• Incremental cost for us to join that had an
exponential benefits for involvement.
• Had demonstrated user needs.
(GDC)

4. The Key to Scalability Is the Network Effect

5. Team of Teams for LeanCI
• What Do we KnowAbout WorkToday?
• Work isn’t done according to an organization chart and most
work is rarely done alone.
• Work is done by teams, who build trust and respect by “doing
things.” And teamwork is naturally agile and flexible.
• Someone doesn’t have to “report to you” to have them add
value or labor to your work.
• Montana StateTeam ofTeams Successes
• Einstein’s Gravity Playlist: The School of Film and
Photography, University of Illinois Chicago, Adler
Planetarium, University InformationTechnology.
• Gallatin Community College, Cisco Networking Academy,
Cisco, Students, University InformationTechnology .
Source: Rewriting the Rules for the Digital Age, 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends

6. Don’t Just Do One Thing, Integrate

7. Research Networks are Time Machines for Our Production Needs
• Software Defined Networks: Research Driving Usage,
and with Private Sector Data Centers, Driving Vendors to
“Bake It In”
• Persistent Network Monitoring with Tools Like GridFTP,
MadDASH for Regions, and Probes Like PerfSonar
• Globus for Dealing with Identity, Graceful Large File
Transfer, and Monitoring of How the Network is Moving
Data
• Changing the Conversation with the End User Through
Hybrid Staff like the CI-Facilitator (programs like ACIREF
and CaRC) to Make it Clear the Network is a Dynamic
Tool that Can Be Used to Empower Work.
• Building Interoperable Regional Networks for Persistent
Big Data Transfer (Pacific Research Platform)

8. One Network with Vendor Supported SDA?
• Simplifies the Operation of a Research Network, No
Longer Separate and Equal, But Instead Converged.
• Less hardware and leveraging the hardware you deploy to do
more.
• Increased Security
• The Science DMZ says let’s harden by DTN because we aren’t
putting it behind the firewall (in/out), SDA offers the opportunity to
intelligently route and continue to use the firewall.
• Increased Flexibility
• Bridger deployment is dependent on location in buildings
because of required hardware. SDA frees us from having the
hardware in the closet before we can help a researcher.
• The Promise of Plug and Play
• Letting routing hardware auto-discover, turning hours of
configuration into moments of deployment.
• Unified and Easier Monitoring
• Using DNA, see deeper and better into your network with one
platform.

9. The Second National Research Platform Workshop

10. FIONette Workshop for EPSCOR and MSI
• A follow-up FIONA workshop will be held as a
lead into the 2nd NRP workshop in Bozeman,
starting August 2nd.
• The program is being developed in coordination
with Richard Alo from Jackson State and will
focus on networking engineers and faculty
interested in expanding the breadth of the NRP
network.
• While the workshop will be open to the
community, there is a specific focus on EPSCoR
affiliated and minority serving institutions.