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Setting up an iRODS federation and replicate data with B2SAFE

This hands-on takes you through the configuration steps necessary to set up an iRODS federation.

Prerequisites

Two iRODS 4.1 zones enabled with B2SAFE 2. Please refer to B2SAFE and iRODS4

Configuring the iRODS federation

Creating remote zones and users

Assume we have to iRODS servers aliceZone with alice as iRODS admin and bobZone with bob as iRODS admin.

  • We need to create remote zones on the respective machines, i.e. on aliceZone we need to create a remote zone for bobZone and vice versa. On aliceZone do
iadmin mkzone bobZone remote <full hostname or ipadress>:1247

Note that you cannot rename bobZone, the remote zone name needs to be exactly the same zone name as on the iRODS server you would like to federate with. On bobZone do

iadmin mkzone aliceZone remote <full hostname or ipadress>:1247
  • Next we need to grant access to alice on bobZone as rodsuser
iadmin mkuser alice#aliceZone rodsuser
  • And on aliceZone we need make bob known as a user
iadmin mkuser bob#bobZone rodsuser

The '#' denotes the zone where the user alice is known and authenticated. rodsuser gives alice user rights. With

iadmin lt user_type

you can check which other user types are known in iRODS.

  • However, this is not enough to set up the federation. If you now try to have a look into bob's folder on aliceZone you receive the following error:
bob@irods4:~$ ils /aliceZone
ERROR: rcObjStat of /aliceZone failed status = -913000 REMOTE_SERVER_SID_NOT_DEFINED

Editing the config files

  • To make both sites known to each other and to authenticate we need to edit the field 'federations' in /etc/irods/server_config.json On bobZone insert:
"federation": [
        {
        "icat_host": "ipadress or full hostname",
        "zone_name": "aliceZone",
        "zone_key": "alice_zone_key",
        "negotiation_key": "TEMPORARY_32byte_negotiation_key"
    }

You will find all required information in the server_config.json on aliceZone. On aliceZone insert:

"federation": [
        {
        "icat_host": "ipadress or full hostname",
        "zone_name": "bobZone",
        "zone_key": "bob_zone_key",
        "negotiation_key": "TEMPORARY_32byte_negotiation_key"
    }
]
  • In some cases you will also have edit the /etc/irods/hosts_config.json. This is the case if you encounter the following error after editing the server_config.json you will have to go through another step.
bob@irods4:~$ ils /aliceZone/home/bob#bobZone
ERROR: connectToRhost: error returned from host localhost status = -38000 status = -38000 SYS_AGENT_INIT_ERR
ERROR: _rcConnect: connectToRhost error, server on localhost:1247 is probably down status = -38000 SYS_AGENT_INIT_ERR

Open the hosts_config.json and enter on aliceZone the addresses of your local zone and the remote zone (bobZone) (please remove the comments):

{
    "host_entries": [
{
            "address_type" : "remote",
            "addresses" : [
                   {"address" : "145.100.58.24"}, #ip address
                   {"address" : "iRODS4-bob.eudat-sara.vm.surfsara.nl"}, #full server name
                   {"address" : "irods4.bob"} #hostname
             ]
        },
        {
            "address_type" : "local",
            "addresses" : [
                   {"address" : "145.100.58.12"},
                   {"address" : "iRODS4-alice.eudat-sara.vm.surfsara.nl"},
                   {"address" : "iRODS4.alice"}
             ]
        }
]
}

Do the same on bobZone and restart the iRODS servers as root.

service irods restart

After logging into irods again on bobZone you are now able to list your folders and files on aliceZone:

iinit
bob@irods4:~$ ils /aliceZone/home/bob#bobZone
/aliceZone/home/bob#bobZone:

We explain HERE the basics of how you can manage data across different iRODS zones. In our B2SAFE-HANDS-ON we illustrate how to employ policies for data management in iRODS federations.