An Introduction to the UK NGS and National e-Infrastructure

1. An Introduction to the UK NGS and National e-Infrastructure David Wallom Technical Director

2. Overview • Our Mission and Goals • Services and Resource Providers • Supporting User Communities • Partner Groups and organisations • Connecting Internationally

3. NGS Mission and Goal To enable coherent electronic access for UK researchers toall computational and data based resources and facilities required to carry out their research, independent of resource or researcher location. Goal: • To enable a UK wide integrated production quality e-infrastructure • Enable expansion to all Higher Education Institutes and UK based research institutions • Supporting cutting edge research • To deliver core services and support • Support research computing groups within universities and research organisations to help them support users • Highlight Collaborative research in key communities • Integrate with international infrastructures supporting UK participation in international projects with EU and US collaborations

4. Vision / What we do • Enable Collaborative Research • Support HEIs and Research Facilities • Enable sharing of resources • Tools / Services to integrate resources • Gateways to European (& international) e-infrastructure (NGI) • Centre of Excellence • Helpdesk • Training • Security Co-ordination • Outreach Activities • Deployment Expertise • Standards engagement

5. Impact • Improve accessibility to local and national resources • ‘Use once Use anywhere’ • Support the Share/Trade/Buy/Sell of resources • Facilitate collaboration nationally and internationally

6. UK e - Infrastructure get common access, tools, information, Users nationally supported services, through NGS HECtoR Regional and HEIs Campus grids Community Grids Integrated internationally LHC VRE, VLE, IE ISIS TS2

7. Example usecase and relationship to services • I want to use my institutional login details on systems to which my collaborative project has a right to access • My project has a certain amount of computing budget allocated to each member, I must not be able to use more than that amount • I want to use secure resources • I need to know that resources allocated to my project are running when I try to use them • I want to know what resources my project has access to • When something doesn’t work I only want to send a help message to one support email rather than a large number of resources and have to manage their answers • I need to know how to develop new applications and services that use this infrastructure and connect to it correctly. Central Authn Authz Accnt Helpdesk Training Monitor Discovery Security Central Services

8. Services EXAMPLES Facility AHE ARGUS EBI DB Lang Corpa Institutional Portal Community Specific Services Data Compute WMS NGS Portal Community Shared Services Central Authn Authz Accnt Helpdesk Training Monitor Discovery Security Central Services

9. Project Membership • Utilise NGS defined central services • Utilise brokering of through NGS to get access to resources supporting the project beyond funded project systems • Utilise the European bridge that NGS provides to contact researchers in similar fields across Europe to share resources and facilities • Representation through NGS User Board

10. National and International Project Engagement • CCPs (4 & b) • STFC CLF • MOTT-2 • NSCCS • NanoCMOS • DSR (analysing requirements) • NeISS • DiRAC • ELIXIR • LifeWatch • CLARIN • GridPP • SKA • SDSS

11. Institutional Membership • Personnel • Appointment of an institutional Campus Champion • Resource Exchanging • Commit institutional research computing resources to join the NGS • Nomination of Collaboration Board Member • Partner • Supporting access by a significant body of NGS users • Affiliate • Supporting only internal users

12. Campus Champions • 20 Nominated CC • A source of information regarding the NGS and any other resources that will aid research and education on their campus; • A conduit for the campus e-Infrastructure needs, requirements and challenges, with direct access to NGS staff.

13. User Community ~400 active users Journal impact factors

14. Econometric analysis Examples Molecular Dynamics Protein - drug interactions Astrophysics data storage and analysis

15. Systems Biology Neutron Scattering Climate modelling Prediction of dose in radiotherapy patients

17. NGS and US Collaboration • Open Science Grid • MoU signed to share technology, and give enhanced support to bridging user communities (Structural Biology taken as exemplar) • XSEDE • NGS provided Letter of Commitment during proposal stage • MoU in negotiation • Shared vision of open standards based infrastructure (supported on both sides OGF standards demonstration platform • Assist communities with HPC time to utilise services • Engage with Campus Champions program to share best practice

18. Conclusions • NGS is here to support university research computing services support their research communities by making connection of ITS enabled resources easier • Existing usage models of NGS enabled resources can be reused quickly and easily by different communities • Connectivity using standard interfaces will include national data sources including EDINA, MIMAS, as well as experimental facilities such DIAMOND, e-Merlin, ISIS and JET, researchers in those areas will see a great increase in the availability • The NGS should be a first port of call for large inter-institutional collaborative projects who require ITS enabled services

19. Thank You http://www.ngs.ac.uk support@grid-support.ac.uk david.wallom@oerc.ox.ac.uk