The International Grid activities in Italy

1. The International Grid activities in Italy and the eBusiness eIndustry eGovernment EScience and Technology (BIGEST) Italian Grid Initiative Rome MIUR – March 2003 Mirco Mazzucato INFN-Padova mirco.mazzucato@pd.infn.it

2. eScience and the Grid • Italy started to develop the Grid technology and related infrastructures in the second half of 1999 • Main motivations • Modern fundamental Science in all domains requires more and more global collaboration (eScience) : improve efficiency, avoid effort duplication, combine distributed expertise ….. • The scientific world is flowed by an enormous amount of distributed raw data • HEP: 10 PBytes/year in 2007 • Earth Observation: Envisat 500 TBytes/year now • Mammography screening of a country like It: 200TBytes/year • Genome databases now ~200TBytes…. quickly growing • ..they need to be transformed in precious piece of knowledge: • Laws of nature, new discoveries, innovative technologies…. • This challenging taskneed new advanced support infrastructures • Modern Virtual Organizations,i.e.eScience distributed teams of scientists with a common scientific goal, should be able to share resources, data, instruments and knowledge in real time at national, regional (Europe) and international level to make scientific progress more efficient and faster • At the end of 1999 in Italy, after a carefull evaluation, we decided that Grids were the promising enabling technology for eScience

3. eIndustry, eGovernment and the Grid • Modern Industries and also Governments rely more and more on innovative choices which are increasingly based on the cycle: • Theoretical description of the problem • Simulation/Calculations of different options • Selection of best solution • Realization • and require access to large computing resources, distributed data and collaborative methods • The Grid middleware can provide common services that all e-Science, e-Industry and e-Government Grid applications can use as TCP/IP provide a common internet access protocol • Italy has fostered and aims to remain a main player in the development of this new e-World (or ERA) and believe that Grids will provide the enabling technology and infrastructure • Italy spend ~1% of GNP in research. Grids should open the possibility to profit of the much larger international scientific efforts • Insisting on pursuing the generality of any solution for the Grid middleware should allow large scale economies and large synergies between different sectors • Industry and Governments can re-use most of the services developed in the favourable e-Science environment that are generally made available as open source implementations enhancing in this way the European competitiveness

4. The Grid National Strategy • The development of the Grid middleware and of the national Grid infrastructure is being actively pursued, since end of 1999, through a series of national and international projects • In general Grid middleware has been whenever possible developed through European funded projects: • DataGrid, DataTAG, GridLab.... • ..and international collaborations (with US Globus, Condor, iVDGL, PPDG, GGF...) to allow worldwide interoperability • GLUE, World Grid, MAGIC.... • ...but also by INFN Grid and ISUFI at national level • ...and now by FIRB.... • The national Grid infrastructure is being developed by national projects • Garr for the underline broadband Research Networking • INFN Grid, FIRB WP3, S-PACI PON for Grids • ....and integrated at international level through EU DataGrid, DataTAG • The next step is the new HEP LHC Computing Grid projects that will provide a common grid environment for the collaborative work of thousands of physicists distributed world-wide • EO, Astronomy Virtual Observatory, Gravitational Waves are following

5. Early Grid R&D in Italy : The INFN-GRID Project • First national Grid project approved in Europe: beg. 2000 • Focused on the preparation of the INFN LHC comp. infrastructure • The size of the project : 20 Italian Sites, ~100 people, ~ 50 FTE’s • Budget devoted to the development of the LHC Regional Computing Centers and related collaborative Grid infrastructure • ..but since the beginning the development of the middleware in INFN Grid was conceived as being of general use and has taken into account the requirements of other sciences • Biology (PD) and Earth Observation(Esrin-ESA-Frascati) • It is a successful example of collaboration between physicists, sw engineers, computer professionals and computer scientists (CS Dep. of Universities of VE, PD, BO, CT, TO,…) and Italian Industries • DatamatSPA and Nice have been major contributors in the developments of the DataGrid middleware • They have now top level expertise in Globus based Grid middleware at European and International Level • Comparable only with IBM • INFN Grid has been and is the national container for INFN to coordinate the contribution to all EU and International Grid projects and to the GGF standardization

6. INFN Grid: activities (traditional) • INFN Grid has developed activities on all those components of a distributed computing infrastructure which allow in principle common solutions . • These tradionally included: • The development of the National testbed(including LHC Computing Centers prototypes integrated and related services ) and the access to the Garr Italian Research Network • The development of the grid middleware and of the European testbed in the EU DataGrid project • The study and solution of Grid M/W interoperability with US and the creation of the first World Grid testbed based on de facto standard components in the EU DataTAG project • Grid integration in HEP applications • The INFN participation to internationl coordination bodies • HEP Joint Technical Board (JTB) • Common EU-US ineroperable solutions (GLUE) • HEP Intergrid Collaboration Board (HICB): EU-US-AP grid projects managers • The contributions to the Grid standardization activities in the Global Grid Forum (GGF) • INFN M/W specific developments: Monitoring (Nagios), Genius portal, LFCG installation kit, test suites....

7. DataGrid: Italian activitieswww.edg.org • Financed by EU for Middleware development and EU testbed (9.8 M€) • INFN: 1 M€, CNR: 0.3 M€, Datamat 0.5 M€, IRST(Tn): 0.3 M€ • Italy: 2.1 M€ for personnel for 3 years • The main Italian contributions are in: • WP1 (Workload Management, resource discovery, grid scheduling) • WP2(Data Management) • WP4( Fabric Management, automatic installation kit) • WP8 (HEP and Biology applications) • Particular care and efforts have been devoted to guarantee support to WP1 managed by INFN • The INFN testbed connected to the European EDG infrastructure has constantly grown and now includes all 20 major INFN sites located in all major Italian Universities • EDG will provide basic middleware, prototype testbed and services for HEP, Biology and EO and input to the new FP6 Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (EGEE)

8. To Russia/Japan To USA Cern Milano Padova/LNL Bologna Torino Roma Cagliari The major sites of the INFN DataGrid testbed connected to the EU EDG testbed – US and ASIA Catania

9. DataTAG project NewYork Abilene UK SuperJANET4 NL STAR-LIGHT SURFnet ESNET GEANT CERN IT GARR-B MREN STAR-TAP Main Partners CERN, INFN,UvA(NL) PPARC(UK), INRIA(FR) • Main focus of INFN EDT activities: • Interoperability between Grids in EU and US (WP4 managed by INFN ) US partnership:Globus, Condor, PPDG, iVDGL projects and HEP experiments

10. DataTAG and GLUE: activitieswww.cern.ch/datatag • Financed by EU with 0.6 M€ for personnel • INFN is managing WP4 (Grid interoperability EU-US) • WP4 has set up with the US project iVDGL, the GLUE ( Global Laboratory Uniform Environment) http://128.3.182.66/mtgs/ivdgl/Interoperability.htmactivities that have now solved the basic Grid interoperability issues between EU and US: • Middleware • Services • Application Grid integration support • INFN has also a small participation in WP2 (Network measurements) • Record in transatlantic transfer speed have been recently achieved • The development of common solutions (or at least agreed and introperable) is a natural interest of European Applications, in particular those concerned by EU-US collaboration. • Most of the HEP experiments have strong US components together with EU ones • and many other sciences now can profit of these solutions: EO, AVO... • INFN DataTAG with iVDGL(US) have provided the first interoperable EDG(EU) and VDT(US) middleware • Demo at IST2002 an SC2002

11. Grid aspects covered by EDG (in red INFN main developments)

12. The INFN development of middleware www.infn.it/grid • Progress on middleware developed by INFN Grid was unexpected • Genius Portal is becoming almost a standard • It is used in all EDG demos and is being adopted by several application (also industrial) and in US • The Grid Monitoring system is now adopted by the LHC Computing Grid project • The installation configuration kit is now a baseline • The Virtual Organization Mapping System is adopted by LCG and by several US projects in alternative to Globus CAS • Their development is continuing and their usage by applications in a wider eScience context is expanding • Tutorials and contacts with Industries are increasing • Last Grid tutorial organized in Torino December 5th and 6th(50 people) • Next Grid tutorial in Catania

13. The Grid FIRB Proposal(see talk of M.Vanneschi) • In FIRB INFN will study and prototype a national Grid Operation Center (GOC) in Italy to support the creation of a national grid infrastructure • The generalization of the infrastructure support is a model successfully established with the research network (GARR, GEANT..) • GOC will support several Italian Sciences applications and eventually the operation of this Italian infrastructure in the context of the new European Infrastructure project EGEE • EU eScience will count on national GOCs (like the FIRB or UK ones) to guarantee 24x24x7 operations of the Grid infrastructure as counts on GEANT and GARR for the network operation • The Italian eScience Grid infrastructure currently support: • Astrophysics • Biology • Computational Chemistry • Geophysics • Earth Observation • Integration with international Grid infrastructures occurs via EDG,EDT,US proj.

14. Some issues • Grid M/W is being developed by several projects: • in US: Globus, Condor, PPDG, GriPhyN, iVDGL..... • in EU: DataGrid, DataTAG, Cross Grid, Gridlab... • Grid M/W is now being adopted by a variety of Science sectors • Current M/W software is typical of prototype development. It is working but it is far from having developed robust solutions and well engineered production quality components assuring long term survival and easy evolution • See e.g. Globus issues • The Grid middleware is deployed in several testbeds. This requires large manpower, duplications of efforts etc and all national Grid programs are looking for sinergies and common deployment and operation support • Policies for resource sharing within comunities having common objectives (VO), security issues, accounting etc start to be generally addressed only now • FP6 need to allow a definite step forward and increase European competitiveness • Grids are now seen by many governments as a Science and Industry development enabling factor and large funds are made available also at national level

15. The Italian Grid for Business, Industry, Government, EScience&Technology(IG-BIGEST) • It is a new national initiative leveraging from INFN, FIRB and PON projects and aiming at coordinating all Italian efforts towards a national grid program and a coordinated Italian effective participation to FP6 and international grid projects • IG-BIGEST includes all Italian Sciences Institutions, major computing centers and many Industries ready to invest in early tests • The IG-BIGEST main objectives • Create a general EU grid infrastructure for eScience integrating all available EU national infrastructures and open to industry early test . Make current Grid middleware robust and fault tolerant for this production infrastructure to allow to start EU eScience • ->Research Infrastructure • Promote R&D on open Grid issues • Support development of specific components and usage of Grids by major applications in e-Science, eIndustry and eGovernment • ->IST(Complex Problem Solving) or specific programs (e.g. eHealth)

16. The 1rst IG-BIGEST FP6 Proposal:EGEE • Consortium Partners, coordinated by CERN, cover ~20 European countries • It is an Integrated Infrastructure Initiative for the RI call • 45-47 Millions available • Initial EGEE request: ~35 M€ for 2 years • But it is a 4 year project aiming at ~100M€ • Preliminar cost sharing • Overall management: 7% • Quality assurance: 3% • Interface to applications: 10% for requirements and validation • Middleware re-engineering: 30% to consolidate current M/W • Grid deployment and operation centers: 50% • 1rst EGEE grid infrastructure size: >50 major EU sites,6-8 operation and call centers, POP on reference sites in each minor country • Strong cooperation with Geant and successor • but EGEE will not allow to make M/W R&D and developments in many area where this is badly needed • Neither to adress the development of higher level specific Industrial, Governments or even science and general application components • ->IST

17. What after EGEE in FP6? • IG-BIGEST need to address with the EU partners major issues present in current grid middleware and more long term developments and can provide expertise in all areas • Programming Tools and Environment • Security: AAAA in particular Audit and Accounting • Aim at the development of services that will bring current Grid security suitable for Business, Industries and Government Virtual Organizations • Data Intensive Services • Extension of current Data Grid Services to cover requirements of extended classes of Science e.g. genomic databases, medical application etc • Knowledge discovery Services • Grid Portals • Resource Management (Brokering, Scheduling and Monitoring) • IG-BIGEST will support the development of the CORE Grid proposal for the next IST call, coordinated by INRIA(T.Priol) • Issues: participation of Industries, applications….

18. The HEAlthgrid VENture(HEAVEN) Network of Excellence • Develop GRID compliant e-Health application on the European scale • On 5 levels: Molecular, Cellular, Organ, Patient, Population • Integrate them, whenever possible, into a European Grid for Health • Partners: CEA, CNRS, EPCC,IG-BIGEST/INFN, • SIEMENS, IBM,...+ Italian Industry (in negotiation) • Timescale: 5 years • Researchers: 70 FTE • Budget: 7 MEuros for eHealth call closing April 25

19. Infrastructure Projects GRID Basic Services Deployment Deployment Deployment Deployment Deployment New specific components for eHealth applications Business Model Pilot application Pilot application Pilot application Pilot application Pilot application Dissemination Integration Prototype How will HEAVEN Work? Feedback

20. The GPCALMA Pilot Application telediagnosis for breast cancer screening Data Collection Centre Diagnostic Centre Data & MetaData Catalogue 1 - Data Collection 4 - Transfer Selected Data 3 - Run CAD remotely 5 - Interactive Diagnosis 2 - Data Registration CAD selection to minimize data transfers for quick diagnosis

21. Additional FP6 proposals for eScience • Many IG-BIGEST applications are part of large European consortia who need to develop their specific Grid higher level services. These include: • Astrophysics • Biology • Computational Chemistry • Geophysics • Climate • Earth Observation • eLearning • Digital Libraries • Need to find appropriate EU calls to extend the European Research Area to cover these applications to allow them to make a critical mass at EU level to compete in the world

22. The IG-BIGEST Industrial activities • IG-BIGEST collaboration with Industries is actively ongoing along 3 lines: • Participation of solution providers in FP6 proposal • E.g. Datamat, Nice , + a couple more under discussion in EGEE and HEAVEN • Develop a specific higher level of services on top of the basic Grid layer to increase the productivity of specific sectors • Exploit current INFN and IG-BIGEST expertise on Grids • Involve Industries in early tests using existing Grid infrastructure available in Italy by INFN, FIRB and PON and in future by EGEE (we hope...)

23. Current case of study:Grids in Industrial Engineering • Involve major Italian Industries dealing with the engineering in the Automotive sectors and some civil engineering companies • We have started regular meetings and mail exchanges to identify potential interest of Grids • Automotive • grid components to allow collaborative work of geographically separate groups working in product development with interconnected data • Identify integration issues of currently most used tools in CAE, CAD, Virtual Reality and Rendering • Identify issue in standardization of data exchange • Identify data transfer requirements • Identify interface and specific requirement towards basic grid services • Engineering • Grid components to allow the outsourcing of most intensive computational activities alowing them to pay what they really use • Simulation, finite element analysis, rendering and virtual reality • This is particularly interesting for SMEs whose market results are increasingly dependent on the capability to develop simulations and Virtual Reality demos • All these are very good candidates for IP in IST-CPS • In near future we will start to address issues related to the Farmaceutical industries of IG-BIGESt and SME’s and Real time grids for apparatus control and catastrophy management, NMI

24. Conclusions • Italian Science and Industries are making a coordinated effort to be active part in the construction of the European Research Area • IG-BIGEST is the national initiative aiming at supporting the development of eScience, eGovernment and eBusiness in Italy and Europe aiming at giving Europe the edge on Grid Research and Industrial outreach • IG-BIGEST will contribute to all aspects of Grids development: R&D, S/W Engineering, deployment of infrastructure, operation, development of specific components for applications for eScience, eBusiness, eIndustry&Government, eHealth... • We count on IST-CPS Unit support to align activities and to develop adequate partnerships and identify possibilities and most convenient Instruments