The National Grid Service Mike Mineter

2 Policy for re-use This presentation can be re-used for academic purposes. However if you do so then please let training- know. We need to gather statistics of re-use: no. of events, number of people trained. Thank you!!training-

3 Acknowledgements Most NGS and GOSC slides are taken from a talk by Stephen Pickles, Technical Director of GOSC Also slides from Malcolm Atkinson on e-Science programme A few I even did myself (If you find an error, you’ve one of mine! Tell me please.)

4 Overview The UK e-science programme: building and using e-Infrastructure GOSC and the NGS NGS middleware and services

5 What is e-Infrastructure – Political view A shared resource –That enables science, research, engineering, medicine, industry, … –It will improve UK / European / … productivity Lisbon Accord 2000 E-Science Vision SR2000 – John Taylor –Commitment by UK government Sections –Always there c.f. telephones, transport, power, internet

6 Staff costs only - Grid Resources Computers & Network funded separately EPSRC Breakdown UK e-Science Budget ( ) Source: Science Budget 2003/4 – 2005/6, DTI(OST) Total: £213M + Industrial Contributions £25M + £100M via JISC

7 Globus Alliance CeSC (Cambridge) Digital Curation Centre e-Science Institute Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute The e-Science Centres EGEE Grid Operations Support Centre National Centre for e-Social Science National Institute for Environmental e-Science

8 GOSC and the NGS

9 The National Grid Service The NGS is the core UK grid, intended for the production use of computational and data grid resources. NGS is the core service resulting from the UK's e-Science programme. NGS is supported by JISC, and is run by the Grid Operations Support Centre (GOSC).

10 GOSC The Grid Operations Support Centre is a distributed “virtual centre” providing deployment and operations support for the UK e-Science programme.

11 GOSC More on this tomorrow!!

12 NGS Organisation Operations Team –led by Andrew Richards (RAL) –representatives from all NGS core nodes –meets bi-weekly by Access Grid –day-to-day operational and deployment issues –reports to Technical Board Technical Board –led by Stephen Pickles –representatives from all sites and GOSC –meets bi-weekly by Access Grid –deals with policy issues and high-level technical strategy –sets medium term goals and priorities –reports to Management Board GOSC Board meets quarterly –representatives from funding bodies, partner sites and major stakeholders –sets long term priorities

13 Managing middleware evolution Important to coordinate and integrate this with deployment and operations work in EGEE, LCG and similar projects. Focus on deployment and operations, NOT development. UK Campus and other Grids OMII ETF NGS Other software sources Software with proven capability & realistic deployment experience ‘Gold’ services Prototypes & specifications Feedback & future requirements EGEE… Deployment/testing/advice Operations Engineering Task Force

14 NGS core nodes : Need UK e-Science certificate (1-2 days) Apply through NGS web site (1-2 weeks)

15 Gaining Access NGS core nodes data nodes at RAL and Manchester compute nodes at Oxford and Leeds free at point of use apply through NGS web site accept terms and conditions of use light-weight peer review –1-2 weeks to do: project or VO-based application and registration all access is through digital X.509 certificates –from UK e-Science CA –or recognized peer National HPC services HPCx CSAR Must apply separately to research councils Digital certificate and Conventional (username/ password) access supported

16 U of A HPCxHPCx UofD GOSC NGS Core Nodes: Host core services, coordinate integration, deployment and support +free to access resources for all VOs. Monitored interfaces + services NGS Partner Sites: Integrated with NGS, some services/resources available for all VOs Monitored interfaces + services NGS Affiliated Sites: Integrated with NGS, support for some VO’s Monitored interfaces (+security etc.) RAL Oxford Leeds Man. CSARCSAR U of B U of C Commercial Provider PSRE

Middleware & Services

18 Globus Toolkit Globus Toolkit version 2 –GT from VDT 1.2 –(VDT comprises several middleware packages used in EU, US and UK grids) Job submission (GRAM) File transfer (GridFTP) Shell (GSI-SSH) Information Services (MDS/GIIS/GRIS) –Information providers from GLUE schema

19 NGS software Computation services based on GT2 –Use compute nodes: for sequential or parallel jobs, primarily from batch queues Data services: –Storage Resource Broker: Primarily for file storage and access –“OGSA-DAI”: Data Access and Integration Primarily for grid-enabling databases (relational, XML) Note especially: the NGS Oracle service –Used by NGS services OGSA-DAI and Oracle are available to users – but apply via GOSC

20 SRB Storage Resource Broker from SDSC –Location transparent access to storage Access a file in SRB across a grid, interface is similar to POSIX I/O Mechanism used to access same files from any NGS compute node (unless you synch your accounts) –Metadata catalog –Replica management Clients on compute nodes Servers on data nodes Java and Windows clients for desktop/UI machines

21 Oracle Oracle 9i database Only on data nodes Populated by users/data providers Infrastructure maintained by NGS database administrators Used directly or via OGSA-DAI

22 OGSA-DAI Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) Database Access and Integration (DAI) Developed by UK e-Science projects OGSA-DAI and DAIT OGSA-DQP (Distributed Query Processor) Experimental service based on OGSI/GT3 on Manchester data node only –considering WS-I and WSRF flavours –Uses Oracle underneath Early users from e-Social Science (ConvertGrid)

23 The NGS portal More on this later… NGS has services for “data grid” and “compute grid”; portal gives easier access to some of these and also support for the “people grid” Portlets for –Collaborations to use – e.g. chat –Job submission –Access to information services –GridFTP

24 Key facts Production: deploying middleware after selection and testing – major developments via Engineering Task Force. Evolving: –Middleware –Number of sites –Organisation: VO management Policy negotiation: sites, VOs International commitment

25 Web Sites NGS – –To see what’s happening: GOSC – CSAR – HPCx –

26 Summary NGS is a production service –Therefore cannot include latest research protoypes! –ETF recommends what should be deployed Core sites provide computation and also data services NGS is evolving –OMII, EGEE, Globus Alliance all have m/w under assessment by the ETF for the NGS Selected, deployed middleware currently provides “low-level” tools –New deployments will follow soon –New sites and resources being added !