IASA IT division

1. Technical Manager IASA IT division Marios Chatziangelou

2. Division key areas Division expertise: focused on three main areas: • (Inter)National IT services (EU/National projects) • Institutional-level IT services • Software Development

3. Activities An overview of the IT team/division activities: 3

4. (Inter)National IT services Introduction • EU-funded projects • i.e. GRIDCC, EGEE I-II-III, EGI, PRACE etc. • Nationally-level projects • i.e. HellasGrid I-II, HellasHPC etc. • Current responsibilities/active roles (Grid-Computing) • EGI task leader for User Community Technical Services • Regional Coordinator for the operations in the South Eastern Europe • Country representative/coordinator for HellasGrid • Experienced WP leader in numerous EU projects • Preparation of EU proposals (related to Grid and/or Infrastructures) 4

5. Grid Computing (1) Joint Research Unit on the EGI-InSpire project - the biggest, 4-year, pan-European project on Grid Computing (total project budget aprox. 100M€) • Operation of two production-level Grid Clusters since 2005 (HG-02-IASA and GR-06-IASA) • Major stakeholder in HellasGrid (Greek National Grid Initiative) • Since 2005 our clusters handled: > 2.6M CPU hours; >1M concrete jobs • Extensive knowledge of gLite, UNICORE, ARC middleware • Testing and certification of grid/distributed services and middleware • Site & Region monitoring (stand-alone/hierarchical mode mainly using open-source frameworks i.e. Nagios, Ganglia, Cacti etc.) • Experienced in distributed systems security 5

6. Grid Computing (2) Infrastructure: Computing/storage >300 cores >20TB reliable storage Networking 1Gigabit connectivity CISCO, eXtreme & 3COM stack switches General >150kBTU - A/C >100kVA – UPS >160kVA – outdoor power-generator permanent connection to the UoA power-safe network 6

7. Grid Computing (3) Software: • Operating Systems (Scientific Linux/Redhat, Debian, Fedora …) • Grid Middleware (gLite 3.2) • Batch systems/Schedulers (OpenPBS/PBS, LSF, Condor, MAUI – experimenting on SGE on Grid) • Information System (OpenLDAP based architecture) • Mass deployment/configuration (Quattor, OSCAR, Rocks) • Grid/Cluster Monitoring (Nagios, Ganglia) • Central logging (syslog-ng) • Updates management (Pakiti) • Network monitoring (SNMP-MRTG) 7

8. Digital Repositories (1) Development & hosting of the EGI-InSpire International Software Repository [http://repository.egi.eu/] (joint effort with GRNET, AUTH, ICCS) Release management of *all* Grid Middleware Distros (gLite, ARC, UNICORE, UMD [Unified Middleware Distribution]) Full support of the EGI release management process • Quality criteria verification process • Stage-Rollout process • Production level software provision 8

9. Digital Repositories (2) Other software handled/managed by the Repo: • Globus • Grid Operations Tools • NAGIOS Grid monitoring suite • European Certificate Authorities packages • Jpackage (mirroring) • g-Eclipse • Ganga • Migrating Desktop and many other …… 9

10. Digital Repositories (3) Three-tier architecture: Data Tier • ESciDoc (fedora-commons distributed repos arch) • Web services based API (SOAP & REST) Business Tier • TAVERNA workflow management system • Java & perl combined implementation • Web services based API (SOAP & REST) • Request Tracker (RT) for SW Release workflow (deposit & verification processes) Presentation Layer • For end-users EPrints & DuraSpace implementation • For automated mass package installation Multiple (hundreds) YUM/APT repositories provision 10

11. International databases (1) IASA is responsible for the Development/Hosting/Maintenance of the International Grid Applications Database [http://appdb.egi.eu] The EGI Applications Database (AppDB) is a full-edged, community driven web portal, meant to act as • a point-of-reference for scientic applications and tools available within the EGI infrastructure (over 260 registered Applicationsand Tools) • registry of persons involved in the development of said software (over 500 registered scientists/developers) Main aims are to: • promote the significance of EGI/Grid in the e-Science • facilitate the reuse of applications and expertise that is available in NGIs • help create a vibrant user community, with information owing inwards directly from involved individuals - developers and end-users alike Descendant of the EGEE Applications Registry portal, developed and provided by INFN and IASA. Since the EGI era, the AppDB came under sole IASA responsibility 11

12. International databases (2) [http://appdb.egi.eu] 12

13. International databases (3) Technically speaking …. Zend Framework • PHP basis for the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern • Supports Table Data Gateway design patterns • Integrates with the dojo toolkit and jQuery dojo toolkit • High-end UI experience through advanced widgets jQuery • Application" look-and-feel through full use of AJAX • Use of jSON for data interchange MySQL data back-end • InnoDB storage engine (triggers, referential integrity) • Extended use of optimized Views (Table/Row Data Gateway DP) • SOAP/REST web-services for integration with external sources 13

14. HPC & Cloud computing High Performance Computing: • Participation to the international project PRACE-1P • Major stakeholder of the HellasHPC consortium (IASA, ICCS, AUTH, UPatras, led by GRNET) Mainly focused on: • Benchmark suite for Tier-0 procurement • Integration of codes into the applications benchmark suite • Synthetic benchmark suite • Performance analysis tools Cloud Computing (experimental phase) • Mainly focused on offering Grid services/resources over Cloud. 14

15. Institutional-level IT services Local Network Operations Center Provision of many Collaboration services Operation of a Helpdesk Provide clustering services

16. Local Network Operations Center Our Local NOC offers the following services: eMailing services: MTA (Postfix), (s)IMAP (courier), Web mail (squirrel & horde), central AV (ClamAV), centrall anti-spamming control (spamassasign), mailing lists (mailman) Ldap catalog for local users auth/authz Virtual Private Network (CA based auth/authz) DNS services (4 domains, 2 private – 2 public) Web services (two Web servers on a Round-Robin mechanism) A local Certification Authority (IASA CA) Central firewall system Gigabit network connectivity All of our systems are centrally monitored: Nagios, Gaglia, Cacti Central logging facility it is also available Syslog-ng, with advanced filters enabled for immediate alerting

17. Collaboration Services & Helpdesk Collaboration services Wiki services (MediaWiki, Twiki) TRAC/SVN for covering the SW development life cycle. Open-xChange facility (an open-source MS exchange replacement) Internal Document Management System 2 TB of reliable Samba store (internal) with “on access” antivirus scanning (ClamAV) eGroupware collaboration suite And many other…. Helpdesk Main aim, is to support and keep track of, our local users request. The Helpdesk workflow, It is fully covered by the Request Tracker (RT) ticketing system. More than 65.000 tickets since 2005, originated from: Local users (requests) Automated alerting mechanisms

18. Clustering Main aim: Provide, secure and reliable computational and storage resources to our local (institutional) scientific communities. In terms of IT resources, the division offers: One cluster with: Computing >120 cores – Storage >10TB Obligations: Software installation & parameterization Operating system (installation, updates, fine-tunning) Libraries, Applications, Tools etc. (i.e. lapack, blas, fft, octave, ROOT, NS2, FLUKA, MEEP, …. ) Application Porting & Support Coding assistance – debugging – benchmarking MPICH/OpenMPI, OpenMP support for parallel applications System/Cluster parameterization User management Adjust the reservation policy based on local users needs Cluster Monitoring disk usage, cpu and memory utilization, networking, security …. And many other …

19. Software Development Indicative projects/developments Driver Application for DAQ (Visual C/C++, multithreaded, ) Applications Database (php/Zend,Javascript/dojo,MySQL) Digital Repository (perl, MySQL, php) National Grid Hardware Registry (php, Javascript/AJAX, perl, MySQL) Software Discovery Engine (php, perl, MySQL) Institutional ERP system (Java, MySQL) Driver developments – PCI, RS232, TCP/IP, USB PCI-X …. Numerous, production-level applications for hardware/software communication, integration and data acquisition (C/C++, Qt, posix threads) and many other ….

20. Skills/Expertise (1) Deep knowledge on every phase through the software development life-cycle process, including: Software requirements gathering Preliminary design Detailed design Coding Unit testing Integration testing Qualification testing Deep knowledge in a software quality assurance techniques, based on both ISO and CMM (Capability Maturity Model) standards.

21. Skills/Expertise (2) Advanced coding skills and experience. Some, indicative, coding languages/frameworks we are focused in, are: Parallel/multithreaded applications development Web application/service development Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle (development and/or administration skills)

22. Affiliations (1) The IASA IT team, keep strong relation with many Greek, as well as International, academic institutes National: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) National Technical University (NTUA) Institute of Communications and Computer Systems (ICCS) Greek Research NETwork (GRNET) Foundation for Research & Technology (FORTH) University of Ioannina (UoI) Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (RACTI) Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH)

23. Affiliations (2) International: CyI - Cyprus Institute CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare LIP - Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas UPV - Universidad Politécnica de Valencia

24. Questions & answers Thank you!! …. 24