Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Andy and Katrina from ESnet volunteer every year to build SCinet โ the research network powering the SuperComputing conference. Last year it ran at 13.72 terabits per second, built by 200+ volunteers in under a month, on $70 million in donated hardware, and torn down in a day. This talk is about how they used Grafana to make that invisible infrastructure visible to 15,000 conference attendees.
Working with a MetrANOVA telemetry pipeline feeding into ClickHouse, they had six days before the conference opened to build and connect dashboards from scratch โ with no pre-existing data connections, an inventory system that had just been swapped out, and a visualization concept with no floor-plan coordinates to work from. They describe the design approach for kiosk-mode dashboards displayed on TVs around the show floor: one question per dashboard, built to draw in non-technical passersby and spark conversation about the network.
Katrina walks through how they hand-typed hundreds of booth coordinates onto a grid screenshot of the show floor to create a live traffic map using the Terranova topology tool and a custom Grafana network map panel plugin she developed (available in the official Grafana plugin catalog). Data connected to ClickHouse on Day 6. By Day 7 โ the conference opening โ dashboards were live, and attendees were stopping to talk about what they were seeing.
0:00 Introduction
0:43 What Is SCinet? The World's Fastest Temporary Network
2:07 Scale: 13.72 Tbps, 200 Volunteers, $70M in Hardware
3:27 The Build Timeline: One Year to Design, One Week to Operate
5:17 Why Volunteer? Science Networking at Scale
10:23 The Demos: What Happens on SCinet
11:33 Why Network Engineers Need Better Storytelling
13:03 What Is MetrANOVA?
15:47 Designing Dashboards for Kiosk Mode
17:19 Building the Floor Map From Scratch
20:04 Day Six: Data Finally Flows Into ClickHouse
21:12 Day Seven: Showtime
22:27 What's Next for SCinet Visualization
Links/resources:
Learn about ESnet: es.net
Check out the SuperComputing conference: supercomputing.org
Get started with the Grafana Cloud forever-free tier: grafana.com/g/cloud
Have a question? Ask Grot, your AI helper: grafana.com/grot
Reach out in our community forums: https://gra.fan/communityyf
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๐ Was this video helpful? Like and subscribe to our channel for more videos.
Connect with Grafana Labs:
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LinkedIn: (linkedin.com/company/grafana-labs/)
Facebook: (facebook.com/grafana)
#Grafana #Observability #SCinet #SuperComputing #ESnet
Andy and Katrina from ESnet volunteer every year to build SCinet โ the research network powering the SuperComputing conference. Last year it ran at 13.72 terabits per second, built by 200+ volunteers in under a month, on $70 million in donated hardware, and torn down in a day. This talk is about how they used Grafana to make that invisible infrastructure visible to 15,000 conference attendees.
Working with a MetrANOVA telemetry pipeline feeding into ClickHouse, they had six days before the conference opened to build and connect dashboards from scratch โ with no pre-existing data connections, an inventory system that had just been swapped out, and a visualization concept with no floor-plan coordinates to work from. They describe the design approach for kiosk-mode dashboards displayed on TVs around the show floor: one question per dashboard, built to draw in non-technical passersby and spark conversation about the network.
Katrina walks through how they hand-typed hundreds of booth coordinates onto a grid screenshot of the show floor to create a live traffic map using the Terranova topology tool and a custom Grafana network map panel plugin she developed (available in the official Grafana plugin catalog). Data connected to ClickHouse on Day 6. By Day 7 โ the conference opening โ dashboards were live, and attendees were stopping to talk about what they were seeing.
0:00 Introduction
0:43 What Is SCinet? The World's Fastest Temporary Network
2:07 Scale: 13.72 Tbps, 200 Volunteers, $70M in Hardware
3:27 The Build Timeline: One Year to Design, One Week to Operate
5:17 Why Volunteer? Science Networking at Scale
10:23 The Demos: What Happens on SCinet
11:33 Why Network Engineers Need Better Storytelling
13:03 What Is MetrANOVA?
15:47 Designing Dashboards for Kiosk Mode
17:19 Building the Floor Map From Scratch
20:04 Day Six: Data Finally Flows Into ClickHouse
21:12 Day Seven: Showtime
22:27 What's Next for SCinet Visualization
Links/resources:
Learn about ESnet: es.net
Check out the SuperComputing conference: supercomputing.org
Get started with the Grafana Cloud forever-free tier: grafana.com/g/cloud
Have a question? Ask Grot, your AI helper: grafana.com/grot
Reach out in our community forums: https://gra.fan/communityyf
---
Thanks for watching!
๐ Was this video helpful? Like and subscribe to our channel for more videos.
Connect with Grafana Labs:
X: (twitter.com/grafana)
LinkedIn: (linkedin.com/company/grafana-labs/)
Facebook: (facebook.com/grafana)
#Grafana #Observability #SCinet #SuperComputing #ESnet
