GridCoord DoW

Local Activities

The following activities are distributed throughout the UK but form part of the overall UK national effort in grid computing.

National Grid Service (NGS)

The NGS is the core UK grid, intended for the production use of computational and data grid resources. It is the core service resulting from the UK's e-Science programme. NGS is supported by JISC, and is run by the Grid Operations Support Centre (GOSC).

Grid Operations Support Centre (GOSC)

The UK Grid Operations Support Centre is a distributed "virtual centre" providing deployment and operations support for the UK e-Science programme. The centre is led and coordinated by CCLRC in collaboration with the University of Manchester and also include the University of Oxford, the University of Edinburgh and the White Rose Grid at the University of Leeds.

The core of the GOSC is built around operation of the National Grid Service (NGS). The GOSC will support UK services for user authentication, user authorization and project organization, credential management, resource discovery, access portal and more, to be driven by the user requirements.

UK e-Science Grid Support Centre

The UK Grid Support Centre supports all aspects of the deployment, operation and maintenance of grid middleware and distributed resource management for the UK grid test-beds. The Centre website (http://www.grid-support.ac.uk/archive/) contains a collection of documents, software and web links for those involved in setting up a computational grid in the UK. They have also produced a Grid Starter Kit.

Architecture Task Force (ATF)

The Architectural Task Force, led by Professor Malcolm Atkinson of the National e-Science Centre, was established to develop an architectural model for the UK's contributions to grid middleware. The group have been active in helping to develop the OGSA architecture and have continued to advise the directorate on the likely near and long-term developments in grid technologies

Engineering Task Force (ETF)

The Grid Engineering Task Force was formed to guide the construction, testing and demonstration of a prototype UK e-Science grid. It contains members from each of the UK e-Science Centres and the Grid Support Centre.

Security Task Force (STF)

The Security Task Force has been formed to help understand and prioritise the security issues of the grid. The Task Force has created a Security Policy for the programme and is developing a technology roadmap for the UK.

Technical Advisory Group (TAG)

The Technical Advisory Group is made up of UK and international academics and industrial members, who are able to advise the Director on the directions of the Programme, and who act as reviewers for the e-Science Centres and their projects.

National e-Science Centre (NeSC)

The National e-Science Centre was proposed and established by a consortium of departments from the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Its mission is to stimulate the creation of new insights in e-Science and computing science by providing the "reactor vessel and catalysts" which bring together international experts and encourage them to successfully address significant and diverse challenges

Regional e-Science Centres

In addition to the NeSC, eight Regional Centres were created around the UK:

• 
  Belfast e-Science Centre (BeSC)
  
• 
  Cambridge e-Science Centre (CeSC)
  
• 
  e-Science North West (eSNW)
  
• 
  London e-Science Centre (LeSC)
  
• 
  North East e-Science Centre (NEeSC)
  
• 
  Oxford e-Science Centre (OeSC)
  
• 
  Southampton e-Science Centre (SeSC)
  
• 
  Welsh e-Science Centre (WeSC)
  

More information about each of the Centres is given in D.3.1.1.

Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII)

As described in the summary of activities, the focus of the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII) will be on software engineering of grid services. . The OMII has published a Roadmap for Grid Middleware in the UK (http://www.omii.ac.uk/OMIIRoadmap.pdf). The Institute has £6.5M over 3 years to build a software stack for the UK e-Science community.

Grid Operations Centre (GOC)

As described earlier, the Grid Operations Centre (GOC) brings together the grid support role, the network and grid monitoring role and the support for the National Grid Service (NGS). The NGS is the core UK grid, intended for the production use of computational and data grid resources. NGS is supported by Joint Information Services Committee and is run by the Grid Operations Centre. The NGS initially consists of the four dedicated clusters at the University of Manchester, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, White Rose Grid (Yorkshire) and the University of Oxford, and the two national High Performance Computing services, CSAR and HPCx. Thus, the NGS provides access to over 2000 processors, and over 36TB of "data-grid" capacity.

Digital Curation Centre (DCC)

As described earlier, the Digital Curation Centre has been awarded to a consortium lead by the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow (National e-Science Centre), and UKOLN, at the University of Bath; the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (which operate the Rutherford and Daresbury Laboratories). The centre is a joint venture between the Core Programme and JISC, started in January 2004 and is funded for 3 years.

International Activities

It was thought important to ensure that the UK e-Science community is actively communicating and collaborating with the international community. Therefore, it was desirable to encourage the development of an informed UK community on grid technologies and provide funding for them to play an active role in the development of internationally agreed grid protocols at the Global Grid Forum. In the first phase of the programme, a number of activities were initiated to support this aim.

GridNet

The rapid development of e-Science and grid technologies to support e-Science is being stimulated by substantial governmental and industrial investment, in the USA, the UK and many European countries. This is manifest in a large number of grid-based projects and a large number of institutions and companies undertaking grid-related work. To gain the best return on this investment requires substantial coordination, communication and particularly the development of standards, e.g. through GGF and W3C using IETF processes. This requires sustained allocation of leading researchers' and developers' time and effort preparing for and participating in these standards processes. The purpose of the GridNet award is to support those undertaking the work that may lead to.

GridNet provides support for members of the constituency to participate appropriately in the international standardisation and coordination bodies such as GGF, W3C and IETF. GridNet is guided in the choice of those members, in the definition of appropriate participation and in the levels of support given by a GridNet Advisory Board (GNAB). The GNAB is drawn from the constituency and from international advisors well respected in the field (http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/gridnet.html).

Fellowships

The benefits for the UK e-Science Programme from involvement in leading International e-Science projects can be of mutual benefit; clear engagement of the UK in international efforts and standards, plus an opportunity for UK researchers to be involved in the global state of the art. UK researchers are involved with CERN in European and worldwide grid projects such as the International Virtual-Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL, http://www.ivdgl.org/). For example, CERN leads the EU DataGrid project as part of its international drive towards solving the LHC computing problems.

Hence, calls for Fellowships with both CERN and the iVDGL project have been announced in the UK (http://www.research-councils.ac.uk/escience/callsprop.shtml)>

Meetings with Other Countries

Engagement with leading nations in the grid research arena is a key aspect of the programme and so a number of joint workshops have been held with countries around the world, for example, France, US, Australia, Japan, China etc.