Deliverable template

4New communities identification

4.1Introduction

The process to identify new communities includes an approach to reach new communities and inform them about EGEE and a selection among the new communities reached. To reach new communities and inform them about EGEE, a large variety of actions are undertaken by the different project activities including:

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  Presentation of EGEE at workshops and conferences
  
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  Project web site, newsletters, etc.
  
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  Participation to workshops, working groups
  

The project public web site (http://public.eu-egee.org/) designed and maintained by NA2 provides general information for new communities. Clear steps for new communities to join EGEE are given at the following url: http://egee-na4.ct.infn.it/genapps/application_migration.html . To facilitate first experience with grids, a dedicated grid test-bed was set up by the project for training (NA3) and demonstration purposes.

Once new communities are identified, a major issue for EGEE is to keep a selection of users/application areas. As a consequence, one of mandates is to identify, through a well-defined procedure, a portfolio of early user applications from a broad range of application sectors from academia, industry and commerce.

The next paragraphs present the steps to identify new user communities, the environment set up to give a first experience of grids to them and the procedure adopted to select the most promising ones.

4.2Steps for new potential user community identification

When individual researchers or user communities express interest in deploying applications on EGEE, it is important to evaluate their experience in grids, the amount of work needed to port their applications on EGEE and the amount of resources they can dedicate to this task.

The evaluation is in part performed using short questionnaires available on the web sites of the biomedical and generic application sectors. It is also achieved by individual contacts and exchange of mails. If a group of users from a scientific community or members of a European project express interest to deploy a well identified application and has a previous track record in grid deployment, it is encouraged to formalize their interest and apply for NA4 resources through the EGEE Generic Application Advisory Panel. At the same time, the group is invited to use the GILDA (Grid INFN Laboratory for Dissemination Activities) test bed to start application deployment. Individual researchers are also invited to learn about grid deployment and testing using GILDA.

To formalize this process, all new users are invited to go through the following procedure described on NA4 web site (http://egee-na4.ct.infn.it/genapps/application_migration.html) :

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  Review information provided on the EGEE website. Whatever the nature and the scope of the application, the first step is to look at the EGEE web site to learn about the different activities of the project. The NA4 web site presents the goals of NA4 and makes available a set of documents (Technical Annex, Execution plan) useful to better understand the activity milestones and deliverables;
  
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  Establish contact with EGEE NA4 activity;
  
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  Provide information by completing a questionnaire describing the application;
  
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  Follow a training session;
  
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  Proceed with initial deployment for testing purposes;
  
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  Migrate application to EGEE infrastructure with the support of NA4 technical experts.
  
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  Beyond this initial deployment, usage of EGEE infrastructure for production purposes requires that the new scientific community contributes computing resources for heavy production demands.
  

Beside this formal process, all new users are encouraged to get a first hand experience of a grid on the GILDA test-bed (described below). If they wish to apply for NA4 resources, a selection procedure has been set up to prioritize them: they need to submit a request for support, which is reviewed by an advisory panel, EGEE Generic Application Advisory Panel (EGAAP).

4.3The GILDA testbed

One of the crucial issues in the uptake of Grid technology among scientists and technologists in Europe is the ease and speed with which they can get started and acquainted with it. For this purpose, INFN has created GILDA in the context of the INFN Grid Project and the EGEE-NA3/NA4 activities. GILDA is a full grid test-bed completely devoted to dissemination and demonstration purposes. GILDA allows testing the strong capabilities of grid computing. On request, anyone can receive very quickly a grid certificate and a VO membership allowing them to use the infrastructure for 2 weeks. After these two weeks, the certificate expires and has to be renewed.

In the same order with which they appear in its home page (https://gilda.ct.infn.it), GILDA consists of the following elements:

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  the GILDA Test-bed (https://gilda.ct.infn.it/testbed.html);
  
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    it consists of several academic and “commercial” sites and contains all the most relevant Grid services such as Resource Broker, Information Index, Replica Location Service, etc.;
    
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  the Grid Demonstrator (https://grid-demo.ct.infn.it);
  
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    a reduced version of the GENIUS portal that everyone can use to submit to the GILDA Test-bed a pre-defined set of demonstration applications;
    
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  the GILDA Certification Authority (https://gilda.ct.infn.it/CA);
  
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    a real Certification Authority which issues in quasi-real-time way both personal (two-weeks life time) and server (one year) digital certificates;
    
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  the GILDA Virtual Organisation;
  
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    a Virtual Organisation which includes all people wanting to use GILDA;
    
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  the Grid Tutor (https://grid-tutor.ct.infn.it);
  
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    a full fledged version of the GENIUS portal to be used during tutorials, induction courses, and training events in general;
    
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  the GILDA Monitoring System (https://alifarm7.ct.infn.it/gridice/site/site.php);
  
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    based on GridICE (http://server11.infn.it/gridice/), from INFN, it can give different “views” of GILDA as function of both sites and VO’s;
    
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  the GILDA Mailing List;
  
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    [e-mail]
    

archived on the web at http://server11.infn.it/archive-gilda/.

On the GILDA home page links to detailed instructions on how to join GILDA both as single users and entire sites are also available. Instructions are given both as written web documents and video-tutorials (https://gilda.ct.infn.it/video.html) for self-teaching.

GILDA’s key advantages are the following:

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  GILDA uses INFN Grid middleware (http://grid-it.cnaf.infn.it) which is fully compatible with the middleware deployed on EGEE infrastructure. Middlewares used by INFN Grid and EGEE infrastructure differ only by a few services;
  
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  Users only need a certificate to access GILDA. This certificate, delivered by INFN, is valid for 2 weeks;
  
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  The GENIUS grid portal [2] allows quick deployment of new applications.
  

By its nature, then, GILDA is one of the key enabler of the virtuous cycle described before. In fact:

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  a novice user can get the feeling of what is grid computing and which applications can run on a grid infrastructure simply using the Grid Demonstrator which is available around the clock;
  
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  an interested user, participating to a tutorial event or an induction course, can go through all the mandatory procedure of the request of a personal digital certificate and subscription to a VO and then use the Grid Tutor;
  
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  a community, interested in testing the grid, can join GILDA and try to port its applications on its test-bed solving, at a smaller scale, all problems of interfacing the grid services available before entering the huge EGEE infrastructure;
  
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  the various applications from different communities ported on GILDA can be incorporated into the Grid Demonstrator so enriching the portfolio of examples that can be demonstrated to new people;
  
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  a site, wanting to set-up a computing or a storage resource for a grid infrastructure can join GILDA and solve, at a smaller scale, all the problems of installation and proper configuration of the machines.
  

So far, GILDA has been used in 17 tutorial events and induction courses. A continuously updated list of the tutorials given using GILDA is available at https://gilda.ct.infn.it/tutorials.html.

The current status of the GILDA test-bed, as of the 31^st of October 2004, is shown in figure 6.

Figure 6 Current status of the GILDA test-bed

Up to know, the GILDA web site has received more than 220,000 hits. As an example, the distribution of accesses for the month of October 2004 is reported in figure 7.

Figure 7 Access statistics of the GILDA web site for October 2004

Detailed statistics, continuously updated, can be found at https://gilda.ct.infn.it/usage .