1. The Swiss National Grid Association (SwiNG) and the Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid (SMSCG) Project
Wibke Sudholt
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair of the SwiNG Leader of the
Executive Board SMSCG Project

2. Overview Swiss National Grid Association (SwiNG)
National Grid Initiative of Switzerland
Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid (SMSCG)
AAA/SWITCH project
SwiNG Working Group

3. Overview Swiss National Grid Association (SwiNG)
National Grid Initiative of Switzerland
Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid (SMSCG)
AAA/SWITCH project
SwiNG Working Group

4. Grid in Switzerland before SwiNG
Various, somewhat isolated efforts in the Swiss higher education sector
Few projects within individual research groups
Few projects between a limited number of Swiss partners
Participation in EU-sponsored projects by a few institutions
Participation in LCG / EGEE by a few institutions
Participation in international projects by a few institutions
No national coordination, no dedicated funding

5. Some Grid Projects in Switzerland

6. Situation in Europe Funding for Grid projects by the EU
Within FP5 / FP6 / FP7
LCG / EGEE under leadership of high energy physics
Reach-out to other scientific communities
National Grid Initiatives (NGIs) in most European countries, some with considerable funding
e.g., UK e-Science program, German D-Grid, etc.
European Grid Initiative (EGI)
Design study under way

7. What is an NGI = National Grid Initiative?
‘Coordinating body’ for Grid activities within a nation
Must
Have a mandate to represent researchers and institutions in Grid-related matters towards
International bodies (e.g., EU)
Funding agencies
Federal government (SBF, BBT)
Have only one NGI per country
May
Involve only coordination
Develop and operate national Grid infrastructure(s)
Be a legal entity on its own
Be limited to academic or research institutions
Also involve participation by the industry

8. Stakeholders of SwiNG

9. SwiNG Mission
Ensure competitiveness of Swiss science, education and industry by creating value through resource sharing.
Establish and coordinate a sustainable Swiss Grid infrastructure as a dynamic network of resources across different locations and administrative domains.
Provide a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration to leverage the Swiss Grid activities, supporting end-users, researchers, education centers, resource providers and industry.
Represent the interests of the national Grid community towards other national and international bodies.

10. Initialisation of SwiNG
Swiss Grid Days involving representatives from many academic institutions
September 28, 2006: EGEE conference, Geneva
November 23, 2006: Bern
December 7, 2006: Grid Crunching Day, Fribourg
May 7, 2007: Bern
Participants identify clear need for an NGI in Switzerland
Initial Working Groups
Mandate Letter WG to propose an organizational structure and initiate the organisation
Seed Project WG to prototype the infrastructure and ‘seed’ it with applications

11. Association Setup
Must be a cooperative effort involving all interested institutions and groups
Assembly → Mandate and governance
Members are institutions
Governing body of the association
Scientific Council → Scientific and technical program
Members are
Research groups with clear scientific interests
IT departments with clear technological / operational interests
Advises Assembly and Executive Board
Executive Board → Running SwiNG’s daily business
Members are elected by the Assembly
Nomination by the Scientific Council
Working Groups → Implementing the SwiNG program
Members are from the Scientific Council
Report to the Executive Board

12. Organisational Structure

13. Current Status Association founded in Basel on May 16, 2007
Institutions of the academic sectors invited to become member
All cantonal universities
All universities of applied sciences
ETHZ, EPFL, and ETH Research Institutions
Friedrich Miescher Institute
Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics
CSCS
SWITCH
Nominations of representatives from 19 institutions
Assembly meetings
October 31, 2007, Bern
January 28, 2008, Bern
June 23, 2008, Bern
Scientific Council meetings
November 2, 2007, Bern
May 23, 2008, Bern
Leading persons elected
Statutes, by-laws, and regulations agreed upon and released
Yearly institutional membership fee of CHF 5’000 = annual SwiNG budget of CHF 95’000
Currently lobbying for funding

14. Institutional Members
ETH domain
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ)
ETH Research Institutions (EAWAG, EMPA, PSI, WSL)
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)
Cantonal universities
Universität Basel (UniBas)
Universität Bern (UniBE)
Université de Geneve (UniGE)
Université de Neuchâtel (UniNE)
Université de Lausanne (UNIL)
Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI)
Universität Zürich (UZH)
Universities of applied sciences
Berner Fachhochschule (BFH)
Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW)
Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO)
Hochschule Luzern (HSLU)
Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI)
Specialized institutions
Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI)
Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB)
Swiss Academic and Research Network (SWITCH)

15. Assembly Representatives
BFH
Gregor Nyffeler
Head IT Services
CSCS
Peter Kunszt
Group Leader
EPFL
Francois Avellan
Professor (fluid dynamics)
ETH Research Institutions
Stephan Egli
ETHZ
Christoph Grab
Senior Researcher (high energy physics)
FHNW
Niklaus Lang
FMI
Dean Flanders
HES-SO
Daniel Mlynek
Manager
HSLU
René Hüsler
Professor (computer science)
SIB
Ron Appel
Director
SUPSI
Giambattista Ravano
SWITCH
Thomas Brunner
Managing Director
UniBas
Heiko Schuldt
UniBE
Ueli Kienholz
UniGE
Bastien Chopard
UNIL
Hamid Hussain-Khan
Science Services (Grid specialist)
UniNE
Philippe Renard
Professor (hydrology)
USI
Cesare Pautasso
UZH
Kim Baldridge / Alexander Godknecht
Professor (chemistry) / IT Services

16. Member Groups in Scientific Council
CSCS
Distributed High Throughput Computing Group
EPFL
DIT
LACAL
ETHZ
CISD
CMS
ETHZ & UZH
Functional Genomics Centre Zurich
HES-SO
EIG
PSI
SIB
PIG
Vital IT
SWITCH
Grid Team
UniBas
Biozentrum
DBIS
UniBE
Computer Services Department
LHEP
UniGE
HEP
USI
Software Composition
UZH
Computational Structural Biology
IT Services
OCI Computational Chemistry & Grid Computing

17. Leading Persons Executive Board Scientific Council
SwiNG president & Assembly chairperson: Dean Flanders (FMI)
Chairperson: Wibke Sudholt (UZH) Interior
Nabil Abdennadher (HES-SO) Outreach
Peter Kunszt (CSCS) National
Heinz Stockinger (SIB) International
Christoph Witzig (SWITCH) Finance and Legal
Scientific Council
Chairperson: Michael Podvinec (UniBas)

18. Initial Grid Testbed and Applications
Goals of the Seed Working Group
Identify available resources (people, hardware, middleware, applications, ideas)
Propose initial projects (“low hanging fruits”)
Coordination and realization of the seed project
Seed Working Group publication
A. Abdennadher, P. Engel, D. Feichtinger, D. Flanders, P. Flury, S. Haug, P. Jermini, S. Maffioletti, C. Pautasso, H. Stockinger, W. Sudholt, M. Thiemard, N. Williams, C. Witzig, “Initializing a National Grid Infrastructure: Lessons Learned from the Swiss National Grid Association Seed Project”, 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid 2008), Lyon, France, May 19-22, 2008

19. Overview of Achievements
EGEE gLite middleware
NorduGrid ARC middleware
XtremWeb-CH middleware
Condor middleware
Pool established
CSCS, SIB, and SWITCH, VO created, UI at UZH
CSCS, SIB, and UZH, from Swiss Bio Grid
HES-SO and UZH
EPFL, coupling with ARC
SLCS security
Tested at CSCS, SWITCH, and SIB
Tested at UniBE and UZH
Needs changes in or interface to middleware
Tested at EPFL, via ARC
Cones application
Tested at SIB
Scientific usage from UniBE
Not started yet
Tested at EPFL
GAMESS application
Test usage from UZH
Work in progress at HES-SO
Huygens application
No personnel or license
PHYLIP application
Preexisting at HES-SO
Work in progress at EPFL

20. Strategic Goals for Next Four Years
Successfully run Grid applications from different scientific domains
Coordinate the establishment, enhancement and maintenance of core Grid resources
Establish SwiNG as the Swiss National Grid Initiative (NGI) and obtain official representation for Swiss Grid interests in established national and international bodies
Establish sustainable funding for SwiNG
Establish and run education and outreach activities

21. Current Working Groups
Active WGs
ATLAS – Sigve Haug, UniBE
High energy physics
Proteomics – Andreas Quandt, SIB
Bioinformatics
Infrastructure & Basic Grid Services (IBGS) – Peter Kunszt, CSCS, and Christoph Witzig, SWITCH
Grid Architecture Team (GAT)
Grid Operations Team (GOT)
Data Management Team (DMT)
Education & Training – Nabil Abdennadher, HES-SO
Swiss Grid School on October 21-22, 2008, in Geneva:
Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid (SMSCG) – Wibke Sudholt, UZH, and Placi Fluri, SWITCH
Grid Workflow – Cesare Pautasso, USI
WGs in preparation
Campus Grid – Cesare Pautasso, USI
Industry Relations – Wibke Sudholt, UZH
AAA/SWITCH projects

22. Overview Swiss National Grid Association (SwiNG)
National Grid Initiative of Switzerland
Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid (SMSCG)
AAA/SWITCH project
SwiNG Working Group

23. AAA/SWITCH Program Definition Four domains Principles
“e-Infrastructure for e-Science”
Cooperation projects of SWITCH with Swiss higher-education institutions
Emphasis on innovation, cooperation, and sustainability
Runtime
Four domains
AAA – Extending AAI with Auditing, Accounting and Assurance levels
Support for Virtual Organisations (VO)
Grid middleware
e-Learning
Principles
Matching funds
Contact person at each university
Quarterly reporting
Matching funds budget
Cantonal universities: CHF 8 Mio (1.675 Mio competitive bid, 1.6 Mio SWITCH)
Universities of applied sciences: CHF 2.5 Mio (1 Mio competitive bid, 0.5 Mio SWITCH)
ETH domain: CHF 3 Mio (2.4 Mio competitive bid, 0.6 Mio SWITCH)
Application deadlines
University projects: or recommended
Competitive bid: or required

24. SMSCG Project Description
Primary goal
Providing computational resources to solve scientific computational problems
Installation, commissioning, and operation of a computational Grid across several institutions of the Swiss higher education sector
Active involvement of applications from different scientific domains
Key properties
Be multi-disciplinary and user-driven
Include support for users and applications
Foster cooperation between IT infrastructure providers and computational scientists
Employ simple, extensible, and flexible grid middleware
Have integrated user management
Specially focus on security
Be policy-based and sustainable
Grid middleware
NorduGrid ARC chosen as initial middleware
Interoperation with or integration of other middleware will be investigated

25. SMSCG Project Participants
Institution
Leader
Group
Funding status
ETH Zurich
Dr. Peter Kunszt
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)
Pending
Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO)
Prof. Pierre Kuonen
Grid and Ubiquitous Computing Group
Approved (if WSL is funded)
University of Geneva
Andreas Quandt
Proteome Informatics Group (PIG)
Non-funded
Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB)
Dr. Heinz Stockinger
Vital-IT
SWITCH
Placi Flury
Approved
Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI)
Prof. Cesare Pautasso
Faculty of Informatics
University of Bern (UniBE)
Dr. Andres Aeschlimann
Laboratory for High Energy Physics (LHEP)
Approved (via Ubelix Grid project)
Computer Services Department
University of Zurich (UZH)
Dr. Wibke Sudholt
OCI Computational Chemistry & Grid Computing
Approved (university project part)
IT Services
Computational Structural Biology
Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL)
Dr. Mathias Bavay

26. SMSCG Project Setup Responsible institution Runtime
University of Zurich
Runtime
Start of project: , , , or (depending on institution)
End of project:
Total budget (contributed and requested – partly pending)
Manpower: ca. 120 PM
Hardware: 8 resources
Expected number of users
Initially: 15-20
For mature infrastructure:

27. SMSCG Work Packages Work Package Leading Institution
Responsible Person
WP1: Initial installation and operation
CSCS
Dr. Sergio Maffioletti
WP2: Evaluation of middleware components
SIB – Vital-IT
Dr. Heinz Stockinger
WP3: Software repository and validation
SWITCH
Dr. Alessandro Usai
WP4: Monitoring and accounting
Placi Fluri
WP5: Security and policies
UniBE
Dr. Andres Aeschlimann
WP6: Support
Dr. Peter Kunszt
WP7: Applications
WP7a: General tasks and plain applications
Dr. Sigve Haug
WP7b: Alpine3D and POP-C++
WSL
Dr. Mathias Bavay
WP7c: swissPIT and JOpera
USI
Prof. Cesare Pautasso
WP8: Project Management
Leader
UZH
Dr. Wibke Sudholt
Deputy

28. SMSCG Infrastructure Layout

29. SMSCG Software Architecture

30. SMSCG Current Milestones
Title
Date Due
WP8.1
Kick-off meeting of the project
WP3.1
Setup of repository for software, configurations, documentation, and installation instructions
WP6.1
Unique point of contact for every site
WP3.2
Documentation and validation of initial ARC installation
WP1.1
Basic ARC installation with VO support at Univ. Bern and Univ. Zurich, VO services at SWITCH
WP7a.1
Clarification of application license questions

31. SMSCG Upcoming Milestones
Title
Date Due
WP4.1
Initial design of monitoring system
WP1.2
Basic ARC installation with VO support at CSCS, Vital-IT, and WSL
WP6.2
Document describing support requirements, support models and support plan
WP7a.2
Initial grid tests of ATLAS
WP7a.3
Initial grid tests of CHARMM
WP1.3
Computational challenge between sites
WP5.1
Security audit of installed software at all sites
WP7c.1
Initial deployment and tests of swissPIT

32. More Information SwiNG SMSCG Grid computing at UZH
Web site:
Information contact:
Announcement mailing list:
SMSCG
Project leader:
Project deputy:
Wiki page:
Grid computing at UZH
Grid Computing Team:
Wibke’s home page:

33. Thank you!
Questions?