Download Instructions

Aspera's fasp transfer technology eliminates the fundamental bottlenecks of conventional file transfer technologies such as FTP, HTTP, and Windows CIFS, and speeds transfers over public and private IP networks. In addition, users have extraordinary control over individual transfer rates and bandwidth sharing, and full visibility into bandwidth utilization

Installing Aspera:

Please go to the Aspera website and download the Aspera CLI Client. Once installed, you should have the ascp utility available to you.

Transferring Files To/From the Aspera Server:

Once the Aspera client has been successfully installed, transfers to and from the DCC Aspera server can be executed with your DCC username and password. To obtain credentials, please complete the request form here.

Downloading Files:

Upon downloading you will be prompted for your iHMP DCC account password.

Downloading with the aspera client uses the following syntax:

All parameters between the [ ... ] brackets are optional parameters that are described below:

• l - Allows for the user to set a maximum download speed that aspera should attempt to stay at or below for the duration of the transfer. A speed in Megabits must be provided with this flag.
• m - Allows for the user to set a minimum download sped that aspera should attempt to stay at or above for the duration of the transfer. A speed in Megabits must be provided with this flag.
• Q - Turns adaptive rate on. Adaptive rate controls the speed of aspera with a goal of not dominating the bandwidth available. Very useful on busy networks that may have other transfers ongoing.
• T - Turns encryption off. Turning encryption off will allow for a maximum throughput transfer but should not be provided if data being uploaded is sensitive.

An example invocation of a file being downloaded from the HMP DACC server can be found below:

Aspera would attempt to keep the maximum transfer speed at 100 Megabits per second and would not encrypt the data being sent to the DCC server. Adaptive rate flow is turned on so that aspera does not monopolize the network bandwidth. The test_genome.tar file will be downloaded to the local /home/user/genomes folder with the execution of this aspera command.

Downloading a directory of files requires no changes in syntax:

Uploading Files:

Upon uploading you will be prompted for your HMP DACC account password

Uploading files can be achieved using the same download syntax described above:

The only visible change here is supplying a file prior to providing user@aspera.hmpdacc.org:

Here the e_coli.tar file would be uploaded to the ReferenceGenomes folder on the HMP DACC server. Uploading a directory of files would not require any changes as aspera will recognize a folder is being transferred and will recursively step through ensuring that all files found in the directory are transferred.