1. CHAIN Kick-off Meeting - Rome, 13.12.2010
Technical program and issues Roberto Barbera University of Catania and INFN
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting - Rome,

2. Outline CHAIN objectives and actions CHAIN technical work plan
Exploiting commonalities: existing services & information
Issues to be discussed
Summary and conclusions
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

3. CHAIN Objectives and Actions (from the DoW)
O1) Define a strategy and a model for external collaboration, in close collaboration with EGI.eu, which will enable operational and organisation interfacing of EGI and external e- Infrastructures;
O2) Validate this model, as a proof-of-principle, by supporting the extension and consolidation of worldwide Virtual Research Communities […] across the regions for trans-continental research;
O3) Explore and propose concrete steps forward towards the coordination with other projects and initiatives […];
A) These objectives will be achieved by means of an activity of support to existing and emerging communities, coordination of efforts with other e-Infrastructures, harmonisation of best practices and dissemination of results towards stakeholders and policy levels.
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

4. (At least) Two existing scenarios
No previous Grid and e-Infrastructures activities.
Scarce knowledge and/or experience in deploying/managing large e-Infrastructures.
Isolated spots of research activities with high computing demands.
Greenfield regions/countries
e-Infrastructures already started/deployed
Locally developed m/w.
Fair to good knowledge and experience in e-Infrastructures
High quality research groups and institu-tions with world wide collaborations.
Advanced regions/countries
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

5. The CHAIN workplan «at a glance»
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

6. Deliverables & Milestones

7. Quality metrics & thresholds
≥500 contacts registered in the database;
2 conferences and ≥4 thematic workshops;
≥7 press releases and ≥1 video;
≥50 participants (from ≥10 countries) to the workshops and ≥30 qualified participants to the conferences;
≥50 documents in the training material repository;
Average feedback ≥4.5/6 in training events;
≥2 VRCs supported with at least 1 existing and 1 “new” application;
≥10 potentially interested companied contacted.
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

8. A multi-layeredGrid Infrastructure (Slides date back from April 2009 – EELA-2 First Review)
A Grid infrastructure is composed, from bottom to top, of three layers, each of them including Grid and Network components:
At the lower Institute level:
The Resource Centre (RC) is the actual site of the Grid computing resources;
The backbone LAN or MAN network connects the Computing and Storage Elements (CE & SE) at the RC site;
At the intermediate national level:
The National Grid Initiative (NGI) integrates all Grid Institutions in the country and federates under its Grid Operation Centre (GOC) all their RCs in a National Grid;
The underlying National Research & Education Network (NREN) links country-wide the Research and Education Institutes and optimizes / monitors their network activity via its associated Network Operation Centre (NOC);
The upper international layer is made of two entities at the same level:
The Regional Grid Initiative which brings together all NGIs and supervises the various national operations;
The International Network Backbone: the WAN network which integrates the various NRENs and supervises the overall international network activity by means of network support centres.

9. RC Resource Centre tasks Reg. Auth. Monitoring 0th Level User Supp.
Storage
Element(s)
Computing
0th Level
User Supp.
Reg. Auth.
Monitoring
Accounting
Security
inc. resp. RC

10. NGI Country-level tasks Monitoring WMS L&B Cert. Auth. 1st Level
Accounting
M/W
Repo.
Cert. Auth.
VOMS
1st Level
user supp.
Data
Catalogs
Info. Syst.
L&B
WMS
NGI

11. Regional-level tasks Region M/W release Monitoring Accounting
Catch-all CA
Global VOMS
2nd Level
user supp.
Gen. Info.
System
Knowledge repo.
High level
Grid services
Region

12. Training & dissemination tasks
Conferences
Dissemination
Material
Consultancy
Event calendar
Training events
T&D

13. User support tasks User Supp. Tech. requirements Local/remote support
Guidelines
New
communities
Tech. requirements
gathering
Local/remote support
Apps.
Registry
User
Supp.

14. Network and Grid: Asia TEIN3 as International Network Backbone
At least one ROC: APROC (registered in the EGI GOCDB)
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

15. Network and Grid: Latin America
RedClara as International Network Backbone
Two ROCs: IGALC and ROC-LA (both registered in the EGI GOCDB)
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

16. Network and Grid: Africa
EUMEDCONNECT2 as International Network Backbone in the Mediterranean region
Ubuntunet Alliance and WACREN in Sub-Sahara (but AfricaConnect is still to be funded)
Africa ROC (soon registered in a dedicated «catch-all» instance of GOCDB)
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

17. AuthN/AuthZ services
National and «catch-all» Certification Authorities exist in all Regions addressed by CHAIN;
«Catch-all» VOs exist in all Regions except Sub-Saharan Africa;
Any other VRC-specific VO can be either created or authorized from the CIC portal:
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

18. User support Asia and Latin America use the EGI instance of GGUS:
A dedicated «catch-all» instance of GGUS is already available for Africa:
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

19. Training A MoU has already been signed between CHAIN and EPIKH:
EPIKH has partners in all Regions addressed by CHAIN:
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

20. VRC identification
Application DBs available in all the Regions addressed by CHAIN:
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

21. Global statistics (1/2) (data are from May 2010)
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

22. Global statistics (2/2) (data are from May 2010)
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

23. Issues (for me) to be discussed
Define the details of the collaboration with EGI.eu;
Make the actions of CHAIN and other projects (GISELA in Latin America, EUMEDGRID-Support in the Mediterranean, and EU-IndiaGrid2 in India) complementary and not duplicated;
Address all the key players and relevant stakeholders in Sub- Saharan Africa;
Identify the entities that could best ensure long term sustainability of e-Infrastructures in Far-East Asia and Sub- Saharan Africa;
Checkpoint on the status of the interoperability between European and Chinese middleware;
Identify ASAP the list and location of events (both internal and external) where CHAIN can have the strongest impact.
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

24. Summary and conclusions
CHAIN is doubly challenging: 1) for the geographic coverage and 2) for the ambitious objectives;
Luckily, the experience accumulated in the last years allow us not to start from scratch; much information and several services are already available;
However, several important issues are open and need to be clarified by today’s meeting.
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,

25. Thank you very much ! Any questions ?
CHAIN Kick-off Meeting – Rome,