National Grid ServiceEnabling Collaboration

Edinburgh 09 March 2010

UK e- Infrastructure

LHC

ISIS TS2

HPCx+ HECtoR

Users get common access, tools, information, nationally supported services, through NGS

Integratedinternationally

VRE, VLE, IE

Regional and Campus grids

Community Grids

HEIs

Key areas

• Adoption of open standards

• Provide access to wide range of resources

• Integrating HEI resources and researchers

• Community-led support programmes

• Promote and facilitate training

Focus

• We Don’t do everything– Focus on

• Access to computational resources• Access to data storage• Data movement and management

– Emphasis on• Open standards• International standards• Collaboration

NGS Member Institutions, March 2010

25 member institutes 33 heterogeneous resources15,000 processing cores

In the last 12 months• 4,629,127 CPU hrs used • 888,862 jobs ran

2nd largest e-Science CA• 22,121 certificates issued• 4,911 active currently

www.ngs.ac.uk

> 75 applications

Diverse User Community

Collaborations

SAGA

Grid: EGI

EGI.eu Office in Amsterdam (March)Information catalogs, AAA, Metadata/data catalogs,File replication, file transferJob brokeringInterfaces and portals ...

Supporting Institutes

Membership• Campus Champion

– Liaison between HEI/research organisation and NGS

• Infrastructure Members (representation on Collaboration Board)

– NGS Interfaces – monitored, certified, accountable

– Affiliate• Maintains control over permitted users

– Partner• Supporting access by a significant body of NGS users• Publish a service level description (SLD) detailing the services offered• Eligible for brokering of resources

Membership Programme

Goals:

1. Increase the range and depth of services and resources that NGS can offer to its users

2. Provide leadership and sources of best practice to sites needing to put their resources “on the Grid”

3. Create communities able to exploit the connected resources for interdisciplinary research

4. Common point of contact for trusted brokering of services. Remove NxN agreements for sharing/brokering resources

Why join?• Institutions have a mission to support their own users

• Increasing dependence on computation & data, and growing need to collaborate beyond the institution

• Access to NGS ‘honest’ brokering service

• Access to NGI. – Common voice on European e-infrastructure

• Growing need to illustrate ‘green’ credentials which are easily demonstrated by commitment to efficient usage of currently owned resources through ‘grid’

Best Practice• NGS well placed for this role

– Supported role to enable National Engagement– Collaborative activity not tied to 1 institution

• Coordination connected to National Facilities

– Push an integration agenda, not specific field– Track record (RCUK international review)

• Opportunities– Growing recognition of role

• NGI, BBSRC + The Genome Analysis Centre, GridPP, BADC ...

– Even better with your experience/expertise/services• Application expertise

Supporting Collaboration

• “Grid” accounting– Support a person, group, project, institution ...

• A “Virtual Organisation”

– Share or exchange resources• NGS acts as “honest broker” • Standard interfaces give some future-proofing

• Opportunities– Support research collaborations (proven tools)– Load balancing– Value added tools with broad application– see next page ...

Outsourcing

• Standard interfaces – Simplify and reduce barrier to moving work – Avoid lock in and reduce barriers to moving– Allow 3rd part providers to offer services

• NGS “honest broker” role• Opportunities

– Sharing resources through common interfaces– Trading/buying/selling via NGS mediation– “commercial” services through standard interfaces

• E.g. cloud , data storage, training...

Impact

• Improve accessibility to local resources

• Widen accessibility to local resources

• Use once Use anywhere

• Share/Trade/Buy/Sell resources– Brokering, monitoring, accounting of services

• Facilitate collaboration nationally and internationally

What does the NGS offer?

• Access to central support services for e-infrastructure– Helpdesk– Training– Application support– Central services e.g. CA, MyProxy, WMS, Information provider,

resource discovery, etc

• Certification process to ensure resource providers deliver service against SLD/standard interfaces

• Common interfaces enable brokering of resources– Ease of access for end users– Ability to trade: buy/sell compute time across institute resource– Ability to link to international resources: International project participation– Ability to share data/migrate data/buy data services at other institutes for

resilience/backup/

Services

• SARoNGS• WMS• HERMES Data Client• Application Hosting Environment (AHE)• Monitoring• Accounting

Direct access GSI-SSH terminal

MEG

NGS Portal/ApplicationsRepository

Support and Training

Local & national training events

NGS Road ShowsNational helpdeskCampus Champion

Online tutorials and practicals

Case Studies and Documentation

• Specific + “Generic”– Site neutral, topical, expert– Freely available, professionally produced– Exploit NGS interfaces and services (it works)

• Opportunities– Support local outreach– Exploit NGS documentation– Publicise your/our achievements

Events

• Community Conferences– CCPb, Bioinformatics,

NGS UF/IF, road shows

Research to Service

www.ngs.ac.uk

Dr Andrew Richardsandrew.richards@stfc.ac.uk

Questions?

Case Studies

Note (to delete): CD suggests case studies highlighting different benefits of NGS, e.g. increased speed (burglary), more complex calculations/simulations (dinosaurs), novel technologies and interoperability (GENIUS), variety of services and interoperability with other resources (GENIE)… They all have applied benefits and impact on people/UK

Predicting CrimeNick Malleston, Leeds University

• burglary rates

• agent-based predictive models

• vary environmental factors, predicts

burglar’s behaviour

adapted Java program to run across Grid

NGS speeds things up - 2.5 years of results in under a week

Dinosaur locomotion

Karl Bates, University of Manchester

• muscle activation patterns in dinosaurs

• NGS allows increased model sophistication

Oceans and ClimateAndrew Price, GENIE project, Southampton

• thermohaline circulation in oceans

• integrates component earth models

• future climate prediction

• 5 yrs computations in 3 months

• integrates NGS and other resources

• NGS hosts database

• users share simulations, metadata

Cerebral blood flow

http://wiki.realitygrid.org/wiki/GENIUS

• processes 2D MRI images, recreates 3D vasculature map

• visualise and steer the model in real time

• advanced resource reservation

• utilize international federated grid of supercomputers

GENIUS project

ESFRI Projects

• European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructure – “bottom up” list of (~30) pan-European RI– Strong support from EC

• Opportunities– Signposts for the future– Ensure UK access to key RI

• ELIXIR, BBMRI, ICOS, HiPER, XFEL, CLARIN, DARIAH ...

– EC support – in connection with EC e-Infrastructure