Launching a great program! SURAgrid All Hands Meeting – September 21, 2006

SURAgrid Roots NMI Testbed SURA staff and contract support –Gary, Mary Fran, Kate Barzee –Open positions Applications/Outreach and SURAgrid Infrastructure Specialists (see: Development supported by SURA funding for: –Apps dev –Portal dev –Bridge CA support

Revised SURA IT Strategy Regional Grid Infrastructure Program (SURAgrid) SCOOP Tele-Medicine Bio-Informatics Connectivity Last Mile High Performance Computing Standards & Specifications Network Research New Simulation And Modeling Applications (energy,weather Population,etc) A Clear Focus on From Fall 2005 SURA IT Committee Meeting

Spring BoT Resolution May 3, 2006 The SURA Board of Trustees formally recognizes the importance of high performance and grid computing to the advancement of scientific research and education within the SURA region and the pivotal role that SURA and the SURAgrid Program is playing in improving the region’s capabilities in these areas; and, The SURA Board of Trustees endorses the continued growth and expansion of the SURAgrid Program through the creation of strategic partnerships, particularly corporate partnerships, and approves the addition of staff resources, not to exceed $1M over three years, to support further development of the SURAgrid Program, especially those aspects that further SURA’s mission to grow the scientific capacity of our region.

A Growing Resource On September 9, 2005 we had 9 institutions, 11 resources, 490 CPUs, 1327 Peak GFlops, 548 GBtyes Memory, 4755 GBytes disk. On August 22, 2006 we have 14 institutions, 18 resources, 912 CPUs, 2990 Peak GFlops, 955 GBytes Memory, 7730 GBytes disk. On track to double again before the end of the year with the addition of IBM systems.

Current Activities Applications discovery / deployment –UNC/SCOOP Coastal Modeling with ADCIRC –LSU Wave Watch 3 (WW3) for SCOOP –UFL CH3D Marine Hydrodynamic Circulation Model –LSU Task Farming within UCoMs (petroleum simulation) –NCState EPANet Optimization/Simulation (water system simulation) –TTU ENDYNE (molecular modeling) –ODU Bio-Electric Simulator –GSU Multiple Genome Alignment

Current Activities Support for SCOOP –Running SCOOP models on SURAgrid –Potential for on-demand resource for critical storm related model runs using SURAgrid IBM environment –Supporting SC06 demo development –IBM supporting SC06 demo and optimization of model codes for IBM systems

Current Activities Corporate Partnership Development –Exploration with Sun –IBM partnership announced August 11 –On-going discussions with Sun –Beginning discussions with Dell

External Funding Activities TATRC – cookbook and grid applications demo NSF SGER – grid applications survey, discovery and demo EPSCoR concept – extending SURAgrid as a model for an EPSCoR grid computing initiative Participation in LSU NSF Tier 2 Proposal –SURAgrid as regional feeder for NSF HPC center On-going review of funding opportunities and support for community proposals that include SURAgrid

Developing a Longer Term Vision Supporting the SURA mission Growing SURAgrid as a regional resource Operationalizing SURAgrid –Improved portal, Bridge CA capabilities … –Applications and “environment” support (focus of new positions) –Documentation Creating a sustainable business model for SURAgrid –Corporate partner and external funding programs –Collaborative SURAgrid community grant development Leveraging the community (SURAgrid participants, GridPlan, ITSG…) Leveraging SURA (Utilizing SURA Business Development, Relations and PR capabilities - Matt Thomas, Greg Kubiak)

One Potential Role for Bridging the gap between campus grids and national HPC centers On a per capita basis researchers from non- SURA states are allocated 3.5 times more NSF HPC service units (SUs) than SURA states SURAgrid can be a significant regional tool for increasing the availability and use of grid computing in support of research and education in the SURA region