Coordination of Middleware Development & Standardization

1. Coordination of Middleware Development & Standardization Sergio Andreozzi INFN-CNAF sergio.andreozzi@cnaf.infn.it EGI-DS WP3 Consolidation Workshop 29-31 Jan 2008, CERN

2. Outline • EGI and Grid middleware development • Why should I care? • What can I do? • The experience of OMII-Europe • Standardization • Development • R&D

3. Why a Middleware function in EGI • Multiple middleware stacks are in use in EU • They exist in order to satisfy different needs • All evolving in functionalities and technologies • the progress in the standardization, convergence and full interoperability of the major stacks is expected to be long • Required by NGIs • see WP2 use case collection • Commercial providers not appearing, nor will probably appear soon • No Infrastructures without middlewares

4. Why a Middleware function in EGI • Enhancements will continue to be needed also in the steady state • current VOs still are evolving their modus operandi • most users are researchers who are expected to evolve their way of using the Grid and keep on the cutting edge of technology • new VOs/Scientific Communities normally need new functionalities • e.g. WISDOM requiring the usage of different middleware stacks to access different types of resources • pushing forward the evolution of the current components standardization process towards uniform interfaces and NGI’s to support more than 1 stack • The users/VOs and the EGI “operation branch” will continue for quite some time needing specific enhancements in performance, reliability and/or functionality

5. Main Grid Middleware Stacks Available Today • From Europe • gLite universe • UNICORE • ARC • OMII-UK • From US: Globus, Condor/VDT • From Asia: NAREGI, CrownGrid Europe plays a key role in middleware development

6. Grid Subsystems made in EU For a complete list, see http://omii-europe.org/OMII-Europe/docs/DJRA20.pdf

7. The Role of EGI for Grid Middleware • Sustain European Grid Middlewares • Coordinate the evolution of the current EU Middleware stacks: • To introduce in an efficient and compatible way new functionalities and improvements • To complete the transition towards the WS-world • To adopt a complete agreed set of standards • Promote convergence

8. The Role of EGI for Grid Middleware • Evolve current middleware stacks towards: • Achieving standard-based interoperability • systems/organizations able to provide/accept services from other systems/organizations and to use the services exchanged to enable them to operate effectively together • Adding new functionalities based on requirements from: • supported VOs • potentially new VOs • operations

9. Interoperability • Definition of coherent set of standards/profiles • Participation/contribution to standardization bodies • To consolidate the available standards by bringing feedbacks from productions environments • To promote and contribute to the definition of missing standards • To contribute to the definition of compliance test suites standards/ profiles requirements production environments standard bodies contributions software components

10. Interoperability • Development • Moving away from gateway-based interoperation towards standard-based interoperability • Automatic standard conformance verification via test suites (supported by ETICS) • Definition of common organizational procedures • Priorities identification • Decision making • Program execution

11. The OMII-Europe Experience • OMII-Europe: • Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute for Europe • EU-funded project: FP6, RI • Duration: May 2006 -> April 2008 • Involved middleware stacks: • gLite, UNICORE, Globus, OMII-UK, CrownGrid, VEGA-GOS • Mission: • Enabling of e-infrastructure interoperability by providing standards-based middleware components leveraging existing work and activities

12. JRA4 SA3 SA1 JRA3 SA2 OMII-Europe Working Cicle Standards Compliance Testing and QA JRA2 New Components Standards Implementation Components JRA1 IN Globus Benchmarking Repository OUT OMII-UK Components CROWN Supported Components on Eval. Infrastructure Integrated Components

13. OMII-Europe Main Contributions To Standard Adoption • OGSA-BES • Functional interface for executing activites • CREAM-BES and UNICORE-BES • GLUE • Common definition/representation of Grid entities • Definition as OGF standard, reference implementations • VOMS-SAML • Functional interface for retrieving user privilege attributes • Enabling UNICORE to access VOMS privilege attributes • Accounting/RUS • Functional interface for exchanging accounting information • Exchanging accounting information across gLite, UNICORE and Globus

14. EGI and R&D • In connection with • operation and middleware experts • external organizations • academies and industries • Investigation of new approaches • via incubator projects • for medium-term evolutions • Development of prototypes

15. Conclusion • Grid middleware is the foundation of the European research infrastructure • EGI recognizes the existence of and needs to support different middleware stacks satisfying different requirements • A great set of components made in EU exist! • these components must be further developed and sustained • Standard-based Interoperability is the main path to follow to: • Realize an integrated European Grid infrastructure with different types of resources • Integrate with world-wide Grid infrastructures