Oral Roberts University Advances Cyberinfrastructure with OSPool Integration

When Dr. Stephen R. Wheat first heard about integration of Oral Roberts University computing capacity into the Open Science Pool (OSPool), his response was simple: “Why not? Let’s do it.” Two years later, Oral Roberts University was ready. “Once we were ready, we were running our first jobs in less than two weeks,” recalled Wheat, a Senior Professor of Computer Science at ORU. This milestone marked a significant step forward in ORU’s participation in national research cyberinfrastructure.

ORU, a private university of 5,000 students located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, made significant progress in advancing their cyberinfrastructure in 2022 after receiving a CC* award. The National Science Foundation (NSF) grant ‘invests in coordinated campus-level cyberinfrastructure improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects.’ As part of the grant, ORU was committed to sharing 20% of the purchased computing capacity with a regional- or national-scale system; they chose to share via the OSPool. Wheat led this initiative to increase regional sharing.

Not only has Wheat utilized OSPool integration to advance computing resources at ORU, he has also woven in an educational component. “In fact, in an upcoming undergraduate research project, I’m running up against the need to execute the equivalent of about half a million jobs. That’s where something like OSPool could be really useful,” Wheat explained.

Before this initiative, ORU had been part of the Great Plains Network (GPN), a high-capacity shared network that connects universities and state networks across the Midwest and Great Plains. Wheat explained how ORU’s connection to the GPN and the OneOklahoma Friction Free Network (OFFN) facilitated this transition: “Here in Oklahoma, we have the OneOklahoma Friction Free Network (OFFN) Science DMZ. Being a Science DMZ, OFFN is a network that is set aside for research—advanced cyberinfrastructure. Most science DMZs are, say, within buildings across a campus. Here, the science DMZ is statewide. We have 28 institutional sites connected to OFFN.”

Within the GPN, ORU was part of a specific project called GP-ARGO, which put a OSPool-contributing node on ORU’s campus to give them a feel for being part of a broader infrastructure. This network provided the resources necessary for a smooth transition into the OSPool.

Tim Cartwright, OSG Campus coordinator, mentioned that before receiving the CC* grant, ORU had not been in communication about integration into the OSPool. “Many CC* awardees will have talked to us as part of the proposal process, we encourage that, but Oral Roberts was not one of those campuses. We first heard from them when Stephen reached out [after receiving the award] to talk about the integration,” Cartwright mentioned. After receiving the grant, ORU moved quickly, thanks to Wheat’s support.

Cartwright met with Wheat twice via Zoom. The first meeting was about establishing relationships and discussing the technical approach, and the second meeting guided the team through the integration process. ORU completed the process in just 45 minutes, making it one of the fastest campuses to join the OSPool. One of the main factors contributing to the speedy integration, Cartwright mentioned, was that “He [Stephen] seemed interested in the idea of the spirit of sharing.” This rapid integration was a testament to Wheat’s organization and the university’s commitment to enhancing its technological capabilities.

Campus and PATh staff spent the rest of the summer trying to scale up. When the initial integration begins, campuses start with the smallest and simplest configurations to get things working. From there, more capacity and fine tuning resources can be added. Cartwright mentioned the idea of always building from a known-working configuration, so that each time a change is made, if campus or PATh staff notice issues afterward, it is clear that the recent changes were the likely cause.

However, Oral Roberts’s expansion of sharing into the OSPool wasn’t without hiccups. For example, during renovations to the campus lab, the clusters were temporarily relocated to a smaller space, leading to a shortage of power. At larger campuses like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, data centers have the capacity to handle rearrangements, however, smaller campuses like ORU will sometimes face challenges to adapt to smaller centers.

Another challenge arose when the ORU campus IT department noticed a significant slowdown in the campus’s network. Upon investigation, it was found that the OSPool’s workloads were using most of the campus’s bandwidth, which caused slow internet speeds for students and staff. At that time, ORU decided to halt their OSPool contributions until the OSG usage could be routed through a dedicated firewall device connected to ORU’s OFFN networking. As Cartwright emphasized, while smaller campuses can face difficulties, “sharing space with the OSPool is ultimately the institution’s decision.” By prioritizing how computing capacity is shared, campuses are able to focus on ensuring their own needs are met before beginning sharing.

Wheat is not only integral to the success of ORU’s OSPool integration, but he also plays a significant role in educating the next generation of computer scientists.

“We have a handful of classes that touch on technical computing,” Wheat explained. “One of those I happen to be teaching right now—it’s a high-performance computing and big data class where I merge the two topics together. We also have three other graduate-level data science courses, a machine learning course, an AI course, and a visualizations course.”

Students at ORU benefit from the university’s robust computing resources, thanks to Wheat’s efforts. However, as he noted, most advanced research computing at ORU is conducted through extracurricular research projects rather than within standard coursework.“Our resources here are used for training, but they haven’t necessarily fit the OSPool client model yet,” he said. However, Wheat is planning on utilizing ORU’s computing resources in an upcoming research project and in other educational aspects.

Through ORU’s expanded computing capabilities, students gain hands-on experience in computing and real-world applications of big data analytics. These skills are increasingly valuable in both academic research and industry careers.

As ORU looks to the future, the university will continue to evaluate its level of contribution to the OSPool. Cartwright emphasized that OSPool is designed to be flexible, with campuses free to scale their contributions based on their local goals, capacity, and usage. If ORU or any other institution chooses to halt their contributions, OSPool accommodates those changes without issue. This flexibility ensures that participation in the OSPool remains a voluntary and strategic decision for each campus.