1. Facilitating the use of eInfrastructure: NeSC Training Team Enabling, facilitating and delivering quality training in the UK and Internationally

2. Training Team

3. Background The NeSC training team was formed in April 2004. With initially two staff it has now grown to 7 staff. Members of the training team are supported by EU and Research Council grants. Leader: Prof. Malcolm Atkinson EU training manager: David Fergusson UK training manager: Mike Mineter

4. Support from other projects NeSC Visitors eg. Jennifer Shopf (Globus team) International relationships Ben Clifford (Globus team) Miron Livny (Condor) Roberto Barbera (GENIUS/GILDA) Ruediger Berlich (GidKa FZK) Close relationships internally with: Edina BRIDGES QTLGrid Staff with specific training and support roles OGSA-DAI NextGrid GOSC (NGS)

5. Scope of training The training team has delivered training ranging from introductory material on grids to advanced courses for application developers research leaders in other fields

6. Current training topics Induction Middleware installation Middleware APIs Next generation middlware Web Services WSDL WSRF Globus Toolkit Training team produces courses based on commitments and training requests which have been received GT Course, Edinburgh

7. Training topics Middleware (LCG, Globus, Condor, NGS) User induction to middleware And applications Application developer Middleware (UML, web services) Applications (UML, web services) Data Services OGSA-DAI SRB gridFTP

8. Training Team backgrounds Biology Geography/Finance Physics IT Digital Libraries

9. Courses delivered In the 6 months since its inception the training team has directly delivered: 9 training events in the UK  At NeSC and the University of Stafford  For JISC, EGEE, NGS and OMII 7 training events in Europe  In CERN, FZK Karlsruhe, CNB Madrid, Lithuania and Italy.  For EGEE Also dissemination presentations to introduce people to the concept of the grid

10. Within Edinburgh

11. OGSA-DAI in Edinburgh Open Grid Services Architecture – Data Access and Integration Being developed in Edinburgh by NeSC and EPCC Widely supported in the grid world and by industry (IBM) http://www.ogsadai.org.uk/index.php

12. Beyond Edinburgh -the UK

13. Outside Edinburgh – grids in the UK The UK wide provision of grid services is through the National Grid Service (NGS) Support for grid users through the Grid Operations Centre (GOSC) - Edinburgh is part of this distributed virtual centre

14. What is the NGS? The NGS is the core UK grid From the UK's e-Science programme. NGS is supported by JISC Run by the Grid Operations Support Centre (GOSC).Grid Operations Support Centre (GOSC) The NGS is funded by JISCJISC (3 clusters), CCLRCCCLRC (1 data cluster), and EPSRC (CSAR and HPCx).EPSRC

15. NGS Core Services – 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 will consider WS-I and WSRF flavours when in final release Uses Oracle underneath Early users from e-Social Science (ConvertGrid)

16. NGS Core Services – 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

17. Beyond the UK – Europe and the World

18. Outside Edinburgh – grids in Europe and the world Enabling grids for EsciencE – EGEE Edinburgh is an important partner in this EU initiative (biggest Framework 6 project) Edinburgh is the lead partner responsible for managing training throughout EGEE

19. European training European training has delivered well above planned targets raising grid awareness gaining users building teams empowering developers

20. Coordination of training in Europe The NeSC training team is the leading partner for the training effort in the EGEE project. It coordinates and provides quality assurance for training with 22 partner institutions in 13 countries. In the recent EU review of this project this training activity was singled out as ‘excellent’.

21. Aspects of training infrastructure

22. T-Infrastructure Training often requires special e-Infrastructure T-Infrastructure emulates e-Infrastructure technical, operational & management aspects required by courses T-Infrastructure may anticipate a future platform Preparing for middleware releases Authentication at (or just before) a course Flexibility, light-weight – don’t frighten the participants Authorisation may restrict imposed loads Limit student & course impact – e.g. from errors T ‑ Infrastructure may be operated in isolation Guarantees of availability and response Student exercises generate peak loads Pedagogical requirement for a quick response

23. T-Infrastructure at Edinburgh Dedicated 20 node cluster being delivered NeSC training room PCs Access Grid for training support

24. TRAINING ARCHIVE Metadata Date, course topic, module, author, location, language, version, file type, practical resources, external resources, comments, course level used to search for material through query interface Archive now has over 100 presentations, over 300 files, 34 modules 7 course topics  EGEE induction  Globus ToolKit  LCG2 APIs  LCG2 Installation and Administration  UML for developing web services  Web Services http://www.egee.nesc.ac.uk/trgmat/index.html Web-based centralised registration & scheduling of courses Supported by UEDIN Integrated support using database infrastructure Revision and refinement of material improves its quality

25. GILDA/GENIUS GILDA provides a prototyping mechanism to bring applications and communities to grids GENIUS provides a user friendly portal for introducing users to grids GILDA/GENIUS provide support to training activities Demo mode, no certificates required Certificated users – special VO, portal access to many applications Developer access to GILDA

26. Building on Edinburgh’s grid training strengths Supporting the world – now Edinburgh?