Nikhef Jamboree 2008 BiG Grid Update Jan Just Keijser

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 What is BiG Grid? The “BiG” in the name is the acronym for Budget voor Investeringen in Grootschalige onderzoeksfaciliteiten (Budget for Investment in Large research facilities) Of course, “Grid” is the acronym for Google’s Really Impressive Euh… Dingetje (everything Google does is impressive, right?) So yes, we’re talking about a really, really big grid.

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 Seriously, what’s BiG Grid ? in late 2005, Nikhef, together with partners NCF (the Dutch national foundation for computer facilities) and NBIC (the Netherlands BioInformatics Centre) were awarded a M€ 28 grant to build and operate a Dutch national grid infrastructure, and to support Dutch scientists in their use of this infrastructure. (from “Nikhef Annual Report 2008”, probably page 10) That’s a lot of money, but it’s needed for Hardware (Computing and Storage resources) Peopleware (system administration, maintenance) Electricity and cooling Facilitate data-intensive sciences such as LHC and LOFAR Attracting new fields of science to make use of this national grid infrastructure

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 Who’s involved in BiG Grid ? Board of Directors Frank Linde Peter Michielse (NCF) Bob Hertzberger (NBIC) Executive Team (Nikhef members) Arjen Van Rijn Jeff Templon David Groep Application Analysts Dennis van Dok Mischa Sallé Jan Just Keijser BiG Grid Operations (Nikhef members) Ronald Starink Sven Gabriel Tristan Suerink

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 New Fields of Science Why is attracting new fields of science to the grid so important?  It will be one of the key factors that determines the success of BiG Grid  If BiG Grid is not a success then future investments for grid, Tier-1’s etc will be much harder How will we attract these new fields of science?  New website and programme are being developed right now  Scientists will be able to apply for BiG Grid funding through NWO IRIS  “Funding” means help in getting your application onto the grid, it is not intended for appointing aio’s, postdocs etc. Much more to come in 2009….

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 BiG Grid applications: KNAW/DANS Data Archiving and Network Services  Data from national libraries  Data from archiving services  Linguistic data (e.g. old texts)

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 BiG Grid applications: KNMI/SciaGrid Process data from Sciamachy satellite Couples data at KNMI and SRON with processing facilities at Nikhef and SARA First Dutch grid application that makes use of a robot certificate

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 BiG Grid project: LOFAR data archive ● LOw Frequency ARray radio astronomy telescope, currently being deployed in the Netherlands and Germany ● First phase (ongoing): Design of the data archive The data archive will contain the scientific results of the LOFAR telescope and make these available to researchers in the Netherlands and later across the globe.

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 BiG Grid project: MPI/SURFnet Pilot project on Single Signon Will enable psycholinguistics researchers to safely connect to their grid infrastructures, even when located at an internet cafe First step in getting rid of user grid certificates

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 But don’t forget: Of course we’re also here for the LHC experiments!

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 Future applications eNMR: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance research Bio-Diversity Closer cooperation with NBIC/BioAssist programme Focus is on ,  -sciences In general we will be looking for: New applications New fields of science New problems  the least of our worries

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 Future Directions

Nikhef Jamboree 2008 Questions?