Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “servers”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 91 records · Page 5

Data Access Tools And Services At The Goddard Distributed Active Archive Center (GDAAC)

As one of the largest providers of Earth Science data from the Earth Observing System, GDAAC provides the latest data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) data products via GDAAC's data pool (50TB of disk cache). In order to make this huge volume of data more accessible to the public and science communities, the GDAAC offers multiple data access tools and services: Open Source Project for Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP), Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS/DODS) (GDS), Live Access Server (LAS), OpenGlS Web Map Server (WMS) and Near Archive Data Mining (NADM). The objective is to assist users in retrieving electronically a smaller, usable portion of data for further analysis. The OPeNDAP server, formerly known as the Distributed Oceanographic Data System (DODS), allows the user to retrieve data without worrying about the data format. OPeNDAP is capable of server-side subsetting of HDF, HDF-EOS, netCDF, JGOFS, ASCII, DSP, FITS and binary data formats. The GrADS/DODS server is capable of serving the same data formats as OPeNDAP. GDS has an additional feature of server-side analysis. Users can analyze the data on the server there by decreasing the computational load on their client's system. The LAS is a flexible server that allows user to graphically visualize data on the fly, to request different file formats and to compare variables from distributed locations. Users of LAS have options to use other available graphics viewers such as IDL, Matlab or GrADS. WMS is based on the OPeNDAP for serving geospatial information. WMS supports OpenGlS protocol to provide data in GIs-friendly formats for analysis and visualization. NADM is another access to the GDAAC's data pool. NADM gives users the capability to use a browser to upload their C, FORTRAN or IDL algorithms, test the algorithms, and mine data in the data pool. With NADM, the GDAAC provides an environment physically close to the data source. NADM will benefit users with mining or offer data reduction algorithms by reducing large volumes of data before transmission over the network to the user.

Pham, Long↗

Providing Internet Access to High-Resolution Mars Images

The OnMars server is a computer program that provides Internet access to high-resolution Mars images, maps, and elevation data, all suitable for use in geographical information system (GIS) software for generating images, maps, and computational models of Mars. The OnMars server is an implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) server. Unlike other Mars Internet map servers that provide Martian data using an Earth coordinate system, the OnMars WMS server supports encoding of data in Mars-specific coordinate systems. The OnMars server offers access to most of the available high-resolution Martian image and elevation data, including an 8-meter-per-pixel uncontrolled mosaic of most of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Observer Camera Narrow Angle (MOCNA) image collection, which is not available elsewhere. This server can generate image and map files in the tagged image file format (TIFF), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), 8- or 16-bit Portable Network Graphics (PNG), or Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format. Image control is provided by use of the OGC Style Layer Descriptor (SLD) protocol. The OnMars server also implements tiled WMS protocol and super-overlay KML for high-performance client application programs.

Plesea, Lucian↗

Zebra: A striped network file system

The design of Zebra, a striped network file system, is presented. Zebra applies ideas from log-structured file system (LFS) and RAID research to network file systems, resulting in a network file system that has scalable performance, uses its servers efficiently even when its applications are using small files, and provides high availability. Zebra stripes file data across multiple servers, so that the file transfer rate is not limited by the performance of a single server. High availability is achieved by maintaining parity information for the file system. If a server fails its contents can be reconstructed using the contents of the remaining servers and the parity information. Zebra differs from existing striped file systems in the way it stripes file data: Zebra does not stripe on a per-file basis; instead it stripes the stream of bytes written by each client. Clients write to the servers in units called stripe fragments, which are analogous to segments in an LFS. Stripe fragments contain file blocks that were written recently, without regard to which file they belong. This method of striping has numerous advantages over per-file striping, including increased server efficiency, efficient parity computation, and elimination of parity update.

Hartman, John H.↗

Process evaluation distributed system

The distributed system includes a database server, an administration module, a process evaluation module, and a data display module. The administration module is in communication with the database server for providing observation criteria information to the database server. The process evaluation module is in communication with the database server for obtaining the observation criteria information from the database server and collecting process data based on the observation criteria information. The process evaluation module utilizes a personal digital assistant (PDA). A data display module in communication with the database server, including a website for viewing collected process data in a desired metrics form, the data display module also for providing desired editing and modification of the collected process data. The connectivity established by the database server to the administration module, the process evaluation module, and the data display module, minimizes the requirement for manual input of the collected process data.

Moffatt, Christopher L.↗

Network issues for large mass storage requirements

File Servers and Supercomputing environments need high performance networks to balance the I/O requirements seen in today's demanding computing scenarios. UltraNet is one solution which permits both high aggregate transfer rates and high task-to-task transfer rates as demonstrated in actual tests. UltraNet provides this capability as both a Server-to-Server and Server-to-Client access network giving the supercomputing center the following advantages highest performance Transport Level connections (to 40 MBytes/sec effective rates); matches the throughput of the emerging high performance disk technologies, such as RAID, parallel head transfer devices and software striping; supports standard network and file system applications using SOCKET's based application program interface such as FTP, rcp, rdump, etc.; supports access to the Network File System (NFS) and LARGE aggregate bandwidth for large NFS usage; provides access to a distributed, hierarchical data server capability using DISCOS UniTree product; supports file server solutions available from multiple vendors, including Cray, Convex, Alliant, FPS, IBM, and others.

Perdue, James↗

Requirements for a network storage service

Sandia National Laboratories provides a high performance classified computer network as a core capability in support of its mission of nuclear weapons design and engineering, physical sciences research, and energy research and development. The network, locally known as the Internal Secure Network (ISN), comprises multiple distributed local area networks (LAN's) residing in New Mexico and California. The TCP/IP protocol suite is used for inter-node communications. Scientific workstations and mid-range computers, running UNIX-based operating systems, compose most LAN's. One LAN, operated by the Sandia Corporate Computing Computing Directorate, is a general purpose resource providing a supercomputer and a file server to the entire ISN. The current file server on the supercomputer LAN is an implementation of the Common File Server (CFS). Subsequent to the design of the ISN, Sandia reviewed its mass storage requirements and chose to enter into a competitive procurement to replace the existing file server with one more adaptable to a UNIX/TCP/IP environment. The requirements study for the network was the starting point for the requirements study for the new file server. The file server is called the Network Storage Service (NSS) and its requirements are described. An application or functional description of the NSS is given. The final section adds performance, capacity, and access constraints to the requirements.

Kelly, Suzanne M.↗

The software analysis project for the Office of Human Resources

There were two major sections of the project for the Office of Human Resources (OHR). The first section was to conduct a planning study to analyze software use with the goal of recommending software purchases and determining whether the need exists for a file server. The second section was analysis and distribution planning for retirement planning computer program entitled VISION provided by NASA Headquarters. The software planning study was developed to help OHR analyze the current administrative desktop computing environment and make decisions regarding software acquisition and implementation. There were three major areas addressed by the study: current environment new software requirements, and strategies regarding the implementation of a server in the Office. To gather data on current environment, employees were surveyed and an inventory of computers were produced. The surveys were compiled and analyzed by the ASEE fellow with interpretation help by OHR staff. New software requirements represented a compilation and analysis of the surveyed requests of OHR personnel. Finally, the information on the use of a server represents research done by the ASEE fellow and analysis of survey data to determine software requirements for a server. This included selection of a methodology to estimate the number of copies of each software program required given current use and estimated growth. The report presents the results of the computing survey, a description of the current computing environment, recommenations for changes in the computing environment, current software needs, management advantages of using a server, and management considerations in the implementation of a server. In addition, detailed specifications were presented for the hardware and software recommendations to offer a complete picture to OHR management. The retirement planning computer program available to NASA employees will aid in long-range retirement planning. The intended audience is the NASA civil service employee with several years until retirement. The employee enters current salary and savings information as well as goals concerning salary at retirement, assumptions on inflation, and the return on investments. The program produces a picture of the employee's retirement income from all sources based on the assumptions entered. A session showing features of the program was conducted for key personnel at the Center. After analysis, it was decided to offer the program through the Learning Center starting in August 1994.

Tureman, Robert L., Jr.↗

Geospatial Authentication

A software package that has been designed to allow authentication for determining if the rover(s) is/are within a set of boundaries or a specific area to access critical geospatial information by using GPS signal structures as a means to authenticate mobile devices into a network wirelessly and in real-time has been developed. The advantage lies in that the system only allows those with designated geospatial boundaries or areas into the server. The Geospatial Authentication software has two parts Server and Client. The server software is a virtual private network (VPN) developed in Linux operating system using Perl programming language. The server can be a stand-alone VPN server or can be combined with other applications and services. The client software is a GUI Windows CE software, or Mobile Graphical Software, that allows users to authenticate into a network. The purpose of the client software is to pass the needed satellite information to the server for authentication.

Lyle, Stacey D.↗

"One-Stop Shopping" for Ocean Remote-Sensing and Model Data

OurOcean Portal 2.0 (http:// ourocean.jpl.nasa.gov) is a software system designed to enable users to easily gain access to ocean observation data, both remote-sensing and in-situ, configure and run an Ocean Model with observation data assimilated on a remote computer, and visualize both the observation data and the model outputs. At present, the observation data and models focus on the California coastal regions and Prince William Sound in Alaska. This system can be used to perform both real-time and retrospective analyses of remote-sensing data and model outputs. OurOcean Portal 2.0 incorporates state-of-the-art information technologies (IT) such as MySQL database, Java Web Server (Apache/Tomcat), Live Access Server (LAS), interactive graphics with Java Applet at the Client site and MatLab/GMT at the server site, and distributed computing. OurOcean currently serves over 20 real-time or historical ocean data products. The data are served in pre-generated plots or their native data format. For some of the datasets, users can choose different plotting parameters and produce customized graphics. OurOcean also serves 3D Ocean Model outputs generated by ROMS (Regional Ocean Model System) using LAS. The Live Access Server (LAS) software, developed by the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a configurable Web-server program designed to provide flexible access to geo-referenced scientific data. The model output can be views as plots in horizontal slices, depth profiles or time sequences, or can be downloaded as raw data in different data formats, such as NetCDF, ASCII, Binary, etc. The interactive visualization is provided by graphic software, Ferret, also developed by PMEL. In addition, OurOcean allows users with minimal computing resources to configure and run an Ocean Model with data assimilation on a remote computer. Users may select the forcing input, the data to be assimilated, the simulation period, and the output variables and submit the model to run on a backend parallel computer. When the run is complete, the output will be added to the LAS server for

Li, P. Peggy↗

Requirements for a network storage service

Sandia National Laboratories provides a high performance classified computer network as a core capability in support of its mission of nuclear weapons design and engineering, physical sciences research, and energy research and development. The network, locally known as the Internal Secure Network (ISN), was designed in 1989 and comprises multiple distributed local area networks (LAN's) residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Livermore, California. The TCP/IP protocol suite is used for inner-node communications. Scientific workstations and mid-range computers, running UNIX-based operating systems, compose most LAN's. One LAN, operated by the Sandia Corporate Computing Directorate, is a general purpose resource providing a supercomputer and a file server to the entire ISN. The current file server on the supercomputer LAN is an implementation of the Common File System (CFS) developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Subsequent to the design of the ISN, Sandia reviewed its mass storage requirements and chose to enter into a competitive procurement to replace the existing file server with one more adaptable to a UNIX/TCP/IP environment. The requirements study for the network was the starting point for the requirements study for the new file server. The file server is called the Network Storage Services (NSS) and is requirements are described in this paper. The next section gives an application or functional description of the NSS. The final section adds performance, capacity, and access constraints to the requirements.

Kelly, Suzanne M.↗

The NIST Internet time service

We will describe the NIST Network Time Service which provides time and frequency information over the Internet. Our first time server is located in Boulder, Colorado, a second backup server is under construction there, and we plan to install a third server on the East Coast later this year. The servers are synchronized to UTC(NIST) with an uncertainty of about 0.8 ms RMS and they will respond to time requests from any client on the Internet in several different formats including the DAYTIME, TIME and NTP protocols. The DAYTIME and TIME protocols are the easiest to use and are suitable for providing time to PC's and other small computers. In addition to UTC(NIST), the DAYTIME message provides advance notice of leap seconds and of the transitions to and from Daylight Saving Time. The Daylight Saving Time notice is based on the US transition dates of the first Sunday in April and the last one in October. The NTP is a more complex protocol that is suitable for larger machines; it is normally run as a 'daemon' process in the background and can keep the time of the client to within a few milliseconds of UTC(NIST). We will describe the operating principles of various kinds of client software ranging from a simple program that queries the server once and sets the local clock to more complex 'daemon' processes (such as NTP) that continuously correct the time of the local clock based on periodic calibrations.

Levine, Judah↗

MOD Tool (Microwave Optics Design Tool)

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is currently designing and building a number of instruments that operate in the microwave and millimeter-wave bands. These include MIRO (Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter), MLS (Microwave Limb Sounder), and IMAS (Integrated Multispectral Atmospheric Sounder). These instruments must be designed and built to meet key design criteria (e.g., beamwidth, gain, pointing) obtained from the scientific goals for the instrument. These criteria are frequently functions of the operating environment (both thermal and mechanical). To design and build instruments which meet these criteria, it is essential to be able to model the instrument in its environments. Currently, a number of modeling tools exist. Commonly used tools at JPL include: FEMAP (meshing), NASTRAN (structural modeling), TRASYS and SINDA (thermal modeling), MACOS/IMOS (optical modeling), and POPO (physical optics modeling). Each of these tools is used by an analyst, who models the instrument in one discipline. The analyst then provides the results of this modeling to another analyst, who continues the overall modeling in another discipline. There is a large reengineering task in place at JPL to automate and speed-up the structural and thermal modeling disciplines, which does not include MOD Tool. The focus of MOD Tool (and of this paper) is in the fields unique to microwave and millimeter-wave instrument design. These include initial design and analysis of the instrument without thermal or structural loads, the automation of the transfer of this design to a high-end CAD tool, and the analysis of the structurally deformed instrument (due to structural and/or thermal loads). MOD Tool is a distributed tool, with a database of design information residing on a server, physical optics analysis being performed on a variety of supercomputer platforms, and a graphical user interface (GUI) residing on the user's desktop computer. The MOD Tool client is being developed using Tcl/Tk, which allows the user to work on a choice of platforms (PC, Mac, or Unix) after downloading the Tcl/Tk binary, which is readily available on the web. The MOD Tool server is written using Expect, and it resides on a Sun workstation. Client/server communications are performed over a socket, where upon a connection from a client to the server, the server spawns a child which is be dedicated to communicating with that client. The server communicates with other machines, such as supercomputers using Expect with the username and password being provided by the user on the client.

Katz, Daniel S.↗

An Evaluation of Alternative Designs for a Grid Information Service

The Globus information service wasn't working well. There were many updates of data from Globus daemons which saturated the single server and users couldn't retrieve information. We created a second server for NASA and Alliance. Things were great on that server, but a bit slow on the other server. We needed to know exactly how the information service was being used. What were the best servers and configurations? This viewgraph presentation gives an overview of the evaluation of alternative designs for a Grid Information Service. Details are given on the workload characterization, methodology used, and the performance evaluation.

Smith, Warren↗

Java RMI Software Technology for the Payload Planning System of the International Space Station

The Payload Planning System is for experiment planning on the International Space Station. The planning process has a number of different aspects which need to be stored in a database which is then used to generate reports on the planning process in a variety of formats. This process is currently structured as a 3-tier client/server software architecture comprised of a Java applet at the front end, a Java server in the middle, and an Oracle database in the third tier. This system presently uses CGI, the Common Gateway Interface, to communicate between the user-interface and server tiers and Active Data Objects (ADO) to communicate between the server and database tiers. This project investigated other methods and tools for performing the communications between the three tiers of the current system so that both the system performance and software development time could be improved. We specifically found that for the hardware and software platforms that PPS is required to run on, the best solution is to use Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) for communication between the client and server and SQLJ (Structured Query Language for Java) for server interaction with the database. Prototype implementations showed that RMI combined with SQLJ significantly improved performance and also greatly facilitated construction of the communication software.

Bryant, Barrett R.↗

The D3 Middleware Architecture

DARWIN is a NASA developed, Internet-based system for enabling aerospace researchers to securely and remotely access and collaborate on the analysis of aerospace vehicle design data, primarily the results of wind-tunnel testing and numeric (e.g., computational fluid-dynamics) model executions. DARWIN captures, stores and indexes data; manages derived knowledge (such as visualizations across multiple datasets); and provides an environment for designers to collaborate in the analysis of test results. DARWIN is an interesting application because it supports high-volumes of data. integrates multiple modalities of data display (e.g., images and data visualizations), and provides non-trivial access control mechanisms. DARWIN enables collaboration by allowing not only sharing visualizations of data, but also commentary about and views of data. Here we provide an overview of the architecture of D3, the third generation of DARWIN. Earlier versions of DARWIN were characterized by browser-based interfaces and a hodge-podge of server technologies: CGI scripts, applets, PERL, and so forth. But browsers proved difficult to control, and a proliferation of computational mechanisms proved inefficient and difficult to maintain. D3 substitutes a pure-Java approach for that medley: A Java client communicates (though RMI over HTTPS) with a Java-based application server. Code on the server accesses information from JDBC databases, distributed LDAP security services, and a collaborative information system. D3 is a three tier-architecture, but unlike 'E-commerce' applications, the data usage pattern suggests different strategies than traditional Enterprise Java Beans - we need to move volumes of related data together, considerable processing happens on the client, and the 'business logic' on the server-side is primarily data integration and collaboration. With D3, we are extending DARWIN to handle other data domains and to be a distributed system, where a single login allows a user transparent access to test results from multiple servers and authority domains.

Walton, Joan↗

Wireless Acoustic Measurement System

A prototype wireless acoustic measurement system (WAMS) is one of two main subsystems of the Acoustic Prediction/Measurement Tool, which comprises software, acoustic instrumentation, and electronic hardware combined to afford integrated capabilities for predicting and measuring noise emitted by rocket and jet engines. The other main subsystem is described in "Predicting Rocket or Jet Noise in Real Time" (SSC-00215-1), which appears elsewhere in this issue of NASA Tech Briefs. The WAMS includes analog acoustic measurement instrumentation and analog and digital electronic circuitry combined with computer wireless local-area networking to enable (1) measurement of sound-pressure levels at multiple locations in the sound field of an engine under test and (2) recording and processing of the measurement data. At each field location, the measurements are taken by a portable unit, denoted a field station. There are ten field stations, each of which can take two channels of measurements. Each field station is equipped with two instrumentation microphones, a micro-ATX computer, a wireless network adapter, an environmental enclosure, a directional radio antenna, and a battery power supply. The environmental enclosure shields the computer from weather and from extreme acoustically induced vibrations. The power supply is based on a marine-service lead-acid storage battery that has enough capacity to support operation for as long as 10 hours. A desktop computer serves as a control server for the WAMS. The server is connected to a wireless router for communication with the field stations via a wireless local-area network that complies with wireless-network standard 802.11b of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The router and the wireless network adapters are controlled by use of Linux-compatible driver software. The server runs custom Linux software for synchronizing the recording of measurement data in the field stations. The software includes a module that provides an intuitive graphical user interface through which an operator at the control server can control the operations of the field stations for calibration and for recording of measurement data. A test engineer positions and activates the WAMS. The WAMS automatically establishes the wireless network. Next, the engineer performs pretest calibrations. Then the engineer executes the test and measurement procedures. After the test, the raw measurement files are copied and transferred, through the wireless network, to a hard disk in the control server. Subsequently, the data are processed into 1/3-octave spectrograms.

Anderson, Paul D.↗

Wireless Acoustic Measurement System

A prototype wireless acoustic measurement system (WAMS) is one of two main subsystems of the Acoustic Prediction/ Measurement Tool, which comprises software, acoustic instrumentation, and electronic hardware combined to afford integrated capabilities for predicting and measuring noise emitted by rocket and jet engines. The other main subsystem is described in the article on page 8. The WAMS includes analog acoustic measurement instrumentation and analog and digital electronic circuitry combined with computer wireless local-area networking to enable (1) measurement of sound-pressure levels at multiple locations in the sound field of an engine under test and (2) recording and processing of the measurement data. At each field location, the measurements are taken by a portable unit, denoted a field station. There are ten field stations, each of which can take two channels of measurements. Each field station is equipped with two instrumentation microphones, a micro- ATX computer, a wireless network adapter, an environmental enclosure, a directional radio antenna, and a battery power supply. The environmental enclosure shields the computer from weather and from extreme acoustically induced vibrations. The power supply is based on a marine-service lead-acid storage battery that has enough capacity to support operation for as long as 10 hours. A desktop computer serves as a control server for the WAMS. The server is connected to a wireless router for communication with the field stations via a wireless local-area network that complies with wireless-network standard 802.11b of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The router and the wireless network adapters are controlled by use of Linux-compatible driver software. The server runs custom Linux software for synchronizing the recording of measurement data in the field stations. The software includes a module that provides an intuitive graphical user interface through which an operator at the control server can control the operations of the field stations for calibration and for recording of measurement data. A test engineer positions and activates the WAMS. The WAMS automatically establishes the wireless network. Next, the engineer performs pretest calibrations. Then the engineer executes the test and measurement procedures. After the test, the raw measurement files are copied and transferred, through the wireless network, to a hard disk in the control server. Subsequently, the data are processed into 1.3-octave spectrograms.

Anderson, Paul D.↗

System for Secure Integration of Aviation Data

The Aviation Data Integration System (ADIS) of Ames Research Center has been established to promote analysis of aviation data by airlines and other interested users for purposes of enhancing the quality (especially safety) of flight operations. The ADIS is a system of computer hardware and software for collecting, integrating, and disseminating aviation data pertaining to flights and specified flight events that involve one or more airline(s). The ADIS is secure in the sense that care is taken to ensure the integrity of sources of collected data and to verify the authorizations of requesters to receive data. Most importantly, the ADIS removes a disincentive to collection and exchange of useful data by providing for automatic removal of information that could be used to identify specific flights and crewmembers. Such information, denoted sensitive information, includes flight data (here signifying data collected by sensors aboard an aircraft during flight), weather data for a specified route on a specified date, date and time, and any other information traceable to a specific flight. The removal of information that could be used to perform such tracing is called "deidentification." Airlines are often reluctant to keep flight data in identifiable form because of concerns about loss of anonymity. Hence, one of the things needed to promote retention and analysis of aviation data is an automated means of de-identification of archived flight data to enable integration of flight data with non-flight aviation data while preserving anonymity. Preferably, such an automated means would enable end users of the data to continue to use pre-existing data-analysis software to identify anomalies in flight data without identifying a specific anomalous flight. It would then also be possible to perform statistical analyses of integrated data. These needs are satisfied by the ADIS, which enables an end user to request aviation data associated with de-identified flight data. The ADIS includes client software integrated with other software running on flight-operations quality-assurance (FOQA) computers for purposes of analyzing data to study specified types of events or exceedences (departures of flight parameters from normal ranges). In addition to ADIS client software, ADIS includes server hardware and software that provide services to the ADIS clients via the Internet (see figure). The ADIS server receives and integrates flight and non-flight data pertaining to flights from multiple sources. The server accepts data updates from authorized sources only and responds to requests from authorized users only. In order to satisfy security requirements established by the airlines, (1) an ADIS client must not be accessible from the Internet by an unauthorized user and (2) non-flight data as airport terminal information system (ATIS) and weather data must be displayed without any identifying flight information. ADIS hardware and software architecture as well as encryption and data display scheme are designed to meet these requirements. When a user requests one or more selected aviation data characteristics associated with an event (e.g., a collision, near miss, equipment malfunction, or exceedence), the ADIS client augments the request with date and time information from encrypted files and submits the augmented request to the server. Once the user s authorization has been verified, the server returns the requested information in de-identified form.

Kulkarni, Deepak↗