Towards a Virtual European Supercomputing Infrastructure Vision & issues Sanzio Bassini

Mission statement To contribute to a significant enhancement of capacities and capabilities of HPC in Europe, by the integration of national supercomputing infrastructures. To deploy and operate a distributed multi-terascale European computing platform, based on a very strong coupling of existing national supercomputers. DEISA plans to operate as a virtual European supercomputing centre. To contribute to the deployment of an extended, heterogeneous Grid computing environment for HPC in Europe, needed to interface the DEISA research infrastructures with the rest of the European IT infrastructures.

Subjects Technical l Global File systems l Heterogeneous extension l Relations to Grid technologies l Deployment of high bandwidth vpn – qos Other l Collaborations & pan-European perspective

Artist’s view of the infrastructure The DEISA super-cluster Site A Site B Site CSite D High bandwidth vpn – qos National computing facility Extended Grid services

Two levels of operation Operating system Global file systems Multi-cluster batch managers The integration of national supercomputers operates at this technology level, underneath the Globus Toolkit Grid Security Infrastructure Grid data and resource management Grid information services DEISA heterogeneous resource management interfaces Unicore, Grid application toolkits, etc The heterogeneous Grid extension operates here. Grid middleware (Globus Toolkit)

Global File Systems Global file system Sophisticated software environment, necessary to provide single system image if a clustered computing platform. It provide global data management. Data in the GFS is “ symmetric ” with respect to all computing nodes. GFS encapsulate sophisticated distributed computing and Grid technologies. Applications do not need to be modified to benefit from GFS services. Grid technologies are working in the background, and they are not directly seen by end users.

The integration concept Global distributed file system with continental scope: the key super-cluster integration technology. Site ASite B Site C Site D VPN - QOS

Co-scheduling and meta-computing As co-scheduling not yet mature enough to be massively used in national supercomputing centers without disrupting the efficiency of national services… … DEISA does not rely on meta-computing for massive science production. Instead, it adopts a simple, innovative operational model that relies on communication bandwidth to make the latency problem irrelevant. Co-scheduling and meta-computing will only be used in selected cases of weakly coupled distributed applications.

The operational model Global management of a “resource pool”, that will allow: l The availability of an integrated supercomputing environment for trans- national collaborations, providing global data management through global file systems. l Implementation of job migration across sites (transparent to end users) as a way of releasing significant resources in one particular site for demanding applications. Load balancing computational throughput at a European scale. l Support of distributed applications.

Heterogeneous integration Fundamental strategic choice: no commitment to any particular technology or vendor. This is an operating system (OS) issue, not a hardware issue. At this point in time, heterogeneous extension means integration AIX and Linux systems May be, the only OS whose survival seems guaranteed in the long term.

DEISA and Grid technologies Large scale integration of IT systems is, for DEISA, primarily a strategic issue DEISA is technology neutral. Technology choices follow from their capability to adapt to a pre-established operational model, and to provide real services to end users. Three criteria for technology choices: l The necessity of disposing as soon as possible of a stable and reliable European production platform (the “core” platform). Grid technologies work in the background through global file systems and multi-cluster batch managers. l The necessity interfacing this platform with other systems in Europe (the “outer” Grid environment). Deployment of traditional Grid environments l The preparation of their future evolution by the integration of new Grid technologies as they reach maturity (a specific JRA activity).

USERS issues Scientific strategies, identification of users communities: l These are standard actions carried out by the centres, and an important wealth of national scientific reports and strategic studies are available today. This national input must be repositioned in a larger European perspective. Strong deployment of industrial application l A specific joint research activity with industries, leaded by FIAT Research Center in strict connection with DEISA steering commette, is active since the beginning of the project First priority actions l An aggressive communication plan to inform the scientific community of the new horizons in computational science enabled by DEISA Measure of success l DEISA has to provide measurable impact on computational science. This issue will be followed by the DEISA Scientific Committee Monitoring access to resources l Standard service in national supercomputing centers. The dedicated inter- platform network will be included in the list of monitories resources.

Complementarities with other UE projects in the domain of supercomputing Fully complementary between DEISA and HPC-Europe HCP-Europe has to do with the access service provision of supercomputing infrastructure More than 5000 users will be hosted by many DEISA partners to have access to large scale facilities for supercomputing and towards the deployment of a Virtual European Supercomputing Infrastructures “Single point of access” and “Single point of user support” Outreach common shared vision

Cooperation with other leading projects With EGEE l Exploitation of middleware technologies for the access to high end computing facility; l Next generation Grid road map; l Dissemination; With US Teragrid l Deployment of Global File System l Characterization and Implementation constrain of a global Cyberinfrastructure