NETWORKS

• Renewing INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE serves to meet the new needs arising from the large number of services the center.
• The actions have been financed with FEDER funds.
• In the near future RECETGA will have dark fiber links for very high capacity in all major towns in Galicia

The CESGA has realized a deep renewal of his internal infrastructure of communications in the last months to be able to face up to the increasing needs of bandwidth of the servers of the Centre of Supercomputación of Galicia, derived of the quantity of services that offers, and tackle the update of the security systems in the network and its maintenance, like consequence of the improvement in the discharge of accesses of communications of the Network of Science and Technology of Galicia, RECETGA.

The project is funded with FEDER and the performances have been cofirmed by the Xunta de Galicia, through the DXIDI and by the CSIC. After an exhaustive study about the existent technologies in the market, they awarded two public contests with the highest value of 300.000 euros, of which resulted winning the companies, Telindus and Emetel.

New Needs: more bandwidth and network security
CESGA has a number of platforms that allow you to offer a variety of services internally and user institutions: access to supercomputers, grid computing and cloud storage, data, map servers, web hosting and associated services science, management systems documentary and equipment collaboration and banquet rooms for video conferencing or training sessions.

The more than 300 servers with 4,000 processors are in the DPC (Data Processing Center) CESGA, increasingly dependent on data exchange with other servers (internal or external to CESGA) to complete their tasks. This implies a significant increase in the bandwidth needs of these servers and the need and increase the level of availability and network security, both internal and external accesses.

High speed switching

The first contract signed with Telindus CESGA served to equip a "backbone" led to 10 gigabit Ethernet technology used to connect the different existing server cabinets in CESGA 10Gbps capacity, enabling interconnection between the teams happen faster.

The fact that all interconnection equipment have redundant power supplies fed from different power lines, and that all critical equipment are likewise redundant, makes a malfunction or a programmed operation not involving the loss of service. All teams are already operational.

It also gave 1G/10G ability to connect to different access nodes RECETGA distributed by the Galician cities, and also provides ability to connect to 1G job center itself.

Hardware and Software Security

The contract is awarded to Emetel for the acquisition of a high availability configuration of a high capacity firewall incorporates the functionality of intrusion prevention and SSL tunnels determination, which is able to work with bandwidths of 10Gbps network under the new RECETGA-NOVA.

Among the benefits the new solution is implemented in CESGA certainly improved security, both perimeter (managing security at all entrances to CESGA centers) and content (enabling services enable antivirus, antispam, application control filtering and URL's). Also produces an improved management, possible to deploy firewalls from the centers connected to CESGA, and finally, improved accessibility to services from the Internet, through the creation of a secure web portal, and from the premises of CESGA through wifi protected access points.

The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the help of reference CESG08-1R-003, corresponding to the sub-project of scientific-technological equipment of the Directorate General for Research and Management National Plan R+D+i of the Ministry of Science and Innovation (now under the Secretary of State R&D+i, under the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness). The Project is funded by the Xunta de Galicia through DXIDI and the CSIC.

Coming soon: NOVA RECETGA

Moreover CESGA is also the manager of the Network of Science and Technology of Galicia, RECETGA. This allows advanced communications infrastructure interconnecting the campuses and centers established public and private research in Galicia, integrating and enabling access to services that provide research networks nationally and internationally (RedIRIS, GEANT, Internet2 etc. .) and commercial networks.

During 2011, the first sections RECETGA migrated its network backbone to provide services over dark fiber links, providing in the near future points of presence of very high capacity in all major towns in Galicia, and thus facilitating access to services on an equal footing with leading European research institutions.

The improved flow of hits has united communications upgrade security systems in the network and its maintenance.