NGS for e-Social Science

1. http://www.ngs.ac.uk NGS for e-Social Science Stephen Pickles <stephen.pickles@manchester.ac.uk> Technical Director, NGS Workshop on Missing e-Infrastructure Manchester, 15th January, 2007

2. NGS & Partners, 2006

3. e-Infrastructure • NGS provides generic e-Infrastructure for • compute (job submission) • GT2 & Pre-WS GRAM, GridSAM • data • storage, file transfer (GridFTP), collection management (SRB), databases (Oracle, OGSA-DAI) • a range of supporting services • UK e-Science CA, information (MDS/BDII), MyProxy, portal, web site, wiki, helpdesk,... • Not optimised for any particular user or community • requires expertise and commitment to use directly

4. User perspective • Individual users find it hard to • learn to use the generic infrastructure • maintain necessary client software • obtain necessary credentials • negotiate access rights • port and/or adapt their applications to (heterogeneous) Grid environments • change how they work • There is a gap between what a Grid infrastructure provides, and what end users can use • Cost of entry is too high for individual end users • only by banding together into communities (with common goals, applications/tools, data) can they hope to amortise the costs of filling the gaps

5. Provider perspective • NGS told to grow its user base 10 fold • giving smaller and smaller slices of the cake to less and less expert users simply won’t work • naïve approaches to user/account management stop scaling as the numbers of resources and users grow • NGS can only do so much for any individual end-user • NGS needs to start dealing with groups or communities of users with common needs • i.e. Virtual Organisations • NGS will help communities to help themselves

6. Virtual Organisations • Many different understandings of VO • In the NGS view, there is • a consumer-provider relationship between the VO and the Grid • end users are members of (one or more VOs) • VOs bring value to their members by: • sharing applications / tools / data • perhaps providing a community-oriented view of the Grid • negotiating community access rights with providers • ... • Despite free use of VO terminology in Grid • VOs are not yet first class entities in Grids • there is little software to facilitate VO formation/management and VO-based authorisation, and less that directly benefits end-users

7. VOs in NGS • VOMS (VO Membership Service) • web-based interfaces for managing membership and roles, delegated to VO admin • issues VOMS proxies (GSI proxies dressed up with membership and role assertions) • NGS can host VOs in VOMS now • Full integration with NGS account lifecycle by May 07 • project-based applications mapped to VOs • NGS resources to publish which VOs they “support” • NGS partners to get kick-back allocation mapped onto a VO • More VOMS-aware authorisation – on-going • VOs can use NGS resources to provision VO services

8. What else is NGS doing to help VOs? • Making NGS Portal software (portlets etc) available for re-use in community portals • available for download February 2007 • Can provide directories for installing community software on NGS resources • NGS wiki available now for VOs to advertise themselves, their value-adding services and tools, and recruit • SRB federation – making it easier for communities with their own SRB’s to use both • Deploying a UK GRIMOIRES registry (from OMII) where community services can be published • will also register GridSAM instances configured for NGS resources • Providing a “Service Hosting Service”

9. Service Hosting Service Belfast e-Science Centre is newest NGS partner • Approved by NGS Board, December 2006 • General announcement is pending final testing and Web documentation BeSC service has two components • Basic Execution Services • GridSAM instances configured for all NGS resources • Service Hosting Service • BeSC manage various web service containers into which projects or VOs can deploy their own Web or Grid services • OMII, GT4, Apache/WSRF initially • Gives VOs an option to outsource service hosting, and NGS necessary experience to develop models for service hosting • Will involve dialog between users and BeSC support staff • If oversubscribed, will have a waiting list

10. Some early examples • BRIDGES portal allows VO members to run tasks (e.g. BLAST searches) • users don’t even know they’re using NGS • NEBC BioLinux • 100 managed NEBC BioLinux machine situated in community with value-adding applications and tools • NGS client tools are being added to NEBC BioLinux distribution, and some key tools are being extended to use NGS resources for execution of more computationally intensive tasks • Computational Chemists are using the Application Hosting Environment (from OMII) to present certain applications as Web services • application services are managed by a few experts for a larger community

11. Training • Induction to Grid Computing and the North West Grid • Daresbury Laboratory, 25 - 26 January, 2007 • Workshop on e-Infrastructure and Grid Computing • University of Plymouth, 31 January, 2007 • National Grid Service: Application Developer Training • e-Science Institute, Edinburgh, 21 - 23 February, 2007

12. Questions?