Last updated: January 23 2007 09:40:54
Task 2.3 Pilot Testbed Operations  

As Grid Pilot Testbed will be deployed to be used in dissemination activities. The Pilot Testbed Resource Centres aggregate to a Grid framework by deploying the common core middleware, which will allow VOs to run applications on these distributed resources. Following geographical proximity criteria a new “Latin American Regional Operation Centre” (LA-ROC) will be deployed at “continental” level, to support Latin America sites. There is also the need to provide global monitoring and accounting services. With this objective EELA will establish a Testbed GOC (Grid Operation Centre) in coordination with the LA-ROC and the European Regional Operation Centre.

The Pilot Testbed will be established between the following resource centres: CIEMAT in Europe, UFRJ and UFF in Latin America. These sites have been preliminarily identified as having the best composition of hardware and human resources necessary to successfully implement this goal. These resource centres have committed the biggest computational resources to EELA whilst demonstrating proven grid expertise. CERN and other Work Package partners will provide operational support and expertise during the implementation phase.

The network infrastructure necessary for the implementation of the Pilot Testbed will be provided by RNP, CLARA and RED.ES. In Latin America, UFRJ and UFF will take advantage of the gigabit network infrastructure provided by the RNPng network, to be deployed in October 2005. RNPng will be interconnected to RedCLARA, which provides immediate access to GÉANT in Madrid and, hence, to RedIRIS. Based on this high-capacity networking infrastructure, adequate networking support will be made available for grid applications.

These same partners will also provide extra network connections between the Pilot Testbed and dissemination activity sites as necessary. An example of such a temporary link was already demonstrated in November 2004 between Rio de Janeiro, Italy and Spain (using RedCLARA, GÉANT and the testbed network of Project GIGA, in which RNP is a major partner) during an Information Society Summit, EU-LAC Ministerial Forum on the Information Society, where EGEE applications and streaming high-definition television from Spain were showcased to the public.


EELA Pilot Testbed Graphic:

EELA pilot testbed

PARTICIPANTS
OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION

In order to achieve the seamless integration of geographically distributed computing resources into the EELA framework; a number of services must be provided. These services must be implemented in a way fully interoperable with those deployed by European partners. As indicated before, they can be considered at different organisational levels, namely: local, regional (i.e. “shared” infrastructure), and global (EELA).

Task 2.3 initially aims to support the integration of, in principle, the following sites in the Pilot Testbed: CIEMAT, UFRJ, UFF. It’s a stated goal of EELA, after initial deployment, to identify prospective sites amongst partners and other Grid initiatives across LA and SW Europe, for integration in the Testbed. Task 2.1 will assist developing criteria, such as pre-existing network availability and computing resources, locally funded human resources and prospective impact on dissemination activities in the respective country, to select the best sites for integration.

The European institutions are already part of EGEE; their participation in EELA will involve the deployment of complementary middleware, to support EELA applications specified in Work Package 3 and dissemination activities (Work Package 4). As stated before, regarding support, initially the configuration in regions will only take into account the existing South West Europe Federation in EGEE, and Latin America as a whole. Further refinement may be considered in the future. The Pilot Testbed will include a production service based on the resources provided by the European and Latin American partners; in addition the INFN Gilda facility will be used to support the initial porting of some EELA applications.

The support activities for the integration of the computing infrastructure and its operation are:

  • ROCs will support and assist Resource Centres that will deploy and operate local services:
    • Publication of available local resources (Information Index Service)
    • Access to computing resources (Gateway to Computing Service)
    • Access to storage resources (Storage Service)
    • Monitoring of local resources (Monitoring Service)
  • The EELA GOC Centre will be established as a joint effort between SWE and LA Federations and will handle the following global infrastructure services:
    • Global monitoring and accounting
    • Security incidences management
    • Shared VO resources management
    • User support services including bug tracking, helpdesk, knowledge databases and a dedicated web site.

To implement the previous support activities, the following schedule is considered:

  • Deployment of pilot services (at RC, ROC and GOC)
    • Installation of EGEE middleware on pilot RC sites
    • Definition of EELA security policies, response teams and protocols
  • Launching stable EELA Pilot Testbed
    • Setting up monitoring and accounting systems (GOC-RC effort)
    • Validation with an existing EGEE-enabled application; integration and validation of new EELA sites
    • Implementation of security protocols
    • Possible customisation of EGEE monitoring and accounting systems to EELA needs
  • Deployment and support of grid services
    • Integration and validation of new EELA sites
    • Maintenance of security policies
    • Continuing monitoring and accounting of EELA grid
    • Testbed setup for evaluation of new software
  • Pilot Testbed operation, evaluation and revision cycles.
EXPECTED RESULTS

We expect to provide a Pilot Testbed grid environment interoperable with EGEE for Work Packages 3 and 4 foreseen activities.