CHAIN Project: a summary Giuseppe Andronico, INFN

Outline Introduction Objectives General information and CHAIN vision Workplan State of the art analysis Data analysis and recommendations Virtual Research Communities Interoperation & Interoperability Events & dissemination Conclusions EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Computing-intensive science Many research challenges require community effort Fundamental properties of matter Genomics Climate change Medical diagnostics Research is increasingly digital, with increasing amounts of data Computation ever more demanding Example: experimental science uses ever more sophisticated sensors Huge amounts of data Serves user communities around the world International collaborations EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Regional Grid infrastructures CNGrid NKN & Garuda EUAsiaGrid SAGrid & SANREN GISELA EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

CHAIN: global coverage Coordination & Harmonisation of Advanced eINfrastructures EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Project objectives Define a strategy and a model for external collaboration, in close collaboration with EGI.eu which will enable operational and organisation interfacing of EGI and external eInfrastructures Validate this model, as a proof-of-principle, by supporting the extension and consolidation of worldwide Virtual Research Communities Explore and propose concrete steps forward towards the coordination with other projects and initiatives (e.g. EGI.eu, EUMEDGRID-Support, EUIndiaGrid2, LinkSCEEM2, NKN & Garuda, etc.) EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Project information Grant Agreement for a total EC contribution of 1.1 M€ Total cost: about 1.9 M€ Start Date: 1st December 2010 - Duration 24 Months Partners: INFN (Italy - Coordinator) CESNET (Czech Rep.) CIEMAT (Spain) GRNET (Greece) IHEP (China) UBUNTUNET (Africa) CLARA (Latin America) PSA (India) ASREN (Med./Middle East/Gulf) Since 1 August 2011 EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Project strategic vision A world-wide Distributed Computing Infrastructure can address big scientific challenges that are not manageable with departmental computing systems Virtual Research Communities can transparently access different kind of resources: scientific applications and tools, Data Repositories, down to CPUs and Disks. The vision is that of VRCs sharing resources ubiquitously across different administrative domains Regional e-Infrastructures should be made interoperable among each other. CHAIN is committed to promote and validate a proof-of-concept that addresses this EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Project workpackages EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Project workplan State of the Art Assessment Disseminate (WP5) (WP2) Involve the VRCs (WP3) Analyse the different Regional Approaches (WP2, WP4) Demonstrate the usefulness of interoperation (WP3, WP4) Propose a Road-Map and Intermediate solutions (WP4, WP3) Make Recommendations (WP2, WP3, WP4) EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

State of the art analysis (WP2) Analysis of existing NGI literature and related questionnaires Creation of the regional and NGI questionnaires Questionnaires being implemented and published online Collection of contact points from all continents Questionnaire is kept open and collection of contact points from all continents is continued Questionnaire data provided through the CHAIN Knowledge Base EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Knowledge base (WP2, WP5) www.chain-project/knowledge-base EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Country view EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Data analysis (WP4, WP2) Number of sites and number of CPUs EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

WP2 Recommendations 74 Detailed recommendations classified by: Short (1 year), Medium (3 years) and Long term (5 years) High, Medium, Low priority National Grid Initiatives (9): General (5); Regional (4) Interoperations (14): General (1), ROC (3), User Support (1), Monitoring (3), Security (2), Core Services (2); Middleware (2) Interoperability (2): General (1), Input/Output (1) Virtual Research Communities’ perspective: General (2) Regional planning (47): Africa (9), Asia Pacific (6), Central Asia (5), China (7), India (4), Latin America (5), Mediterranean & Arab Countries (11) EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Africa & Arabia ROC (WP2, WP4) http://roc.africa-grid.org EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Virtual Research Communities (WP3) Two VRCs already involved (MoUs signed) WeNMR – Structural biology, making use of NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), SAXS (Small Angle X-ray Scattering), computational modelling or other related techniques to study biomolecules WRF4G - Meteorology and other Earth Science related areas (forecasting techniques, forecast and hurricane research, etc.) Others to follow EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

CHAIN interoperability test: objectives To demonstrate that: e-Infrastructures can be made interoperable to each other using standards (with the meaning of interoperability given above) VRC-specific applications can be submitted from anywhere and run everywhere EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

CHAIN interoperability test: e-Infrastructures involved e-Infrastructure/Project EUAsiaGrid EUChinaGRID EU-IndiaGrid EUMEDGRID GISELA IGI (Italy) SAGrid (South Africa) EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Access: the Science Gateway model (WP3, WP4) Embedded Applications Administrator Power User Basic User ....... App. 1 App. 2 App. N Gateway Science Standard-based middleware-independent Grid Engine Users from different organisations having different roles and privileges EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Standards The framework for Science Gateways proposed and fostered by CHAIN is fully web-based and adopts official worldwide standards and protocols, through their most common implementations: Web interface: JSR 168 and JSR 286 standards (also known as "portlet 1.0" and "portlet 2.0" standards) Authentication: OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) standard and its Shibboleth and SimpleSAMLphp implementations; Authorisation: Lightweight Direct Access Protocol, and its OpenLDAP implementation Digital certificate management: Cryptographic Token Interface Standard (PKCS#11) standard and its Cryptoki implementation Application interface: Open Grid Forum (OGF) Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA) standard and its JSAGA implementation EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

MyJobsMap (1/3) EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

MyJobsMap (2/3) EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Dissemination (WP5) CHAIN website Leaflets Pop-up banner Gadgets Publications Press releases eScienceTalk collaboration EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Events in the first year (WP5) One High-level conference on Climate Change 10 co-organised workshops 5 Schools in cooperation with EPIKH and other projects ICTP Trieste May 2011 EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012 Beirut, Lebanon October 2011 ISGC2011 Taipei March 2011

MoUs with other Projects (WP5, WP4, WP3) In preparation EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Conclusions CHAIN project has successfully reached its first year goals All deliverables contain crucial information with added value: Providing first detailed analysis and regional comparisons Delivering clear and detailed recommendations The second year activity is already clearly planned and the project goals are set and refined No major issues have been encountered so far and the minor difficulties were overcome thanks to the proactive management and good spirit of cooperation shown by all the partners and by other collaborating projects EPIKH Asia4 Final Workshop – Beijing, 24 Apr 2012

Thank you