Report on first discussions about EGEE III (and EGI)

1. Report on first discussions about EGEE III (and EGI) November 8-10, 2006 Abingdon, UK

2. Call for FP7 (EGEE III) • Call: e-Science Grid Infrastructures • 50M€ available in call for all accepted proposals • Opening Jan’07, closing Spring’07 • Instrument: Integrated Infrastructure Initiative • Consisting of Networking Activities, Specific Service Activities, and Joint Research Activities (as in FP6) but with all above categories of activities mandatory in FP7-projects • Electronic submission of proposals (as for EGEE-II) • Duration: 2 years • Starting April 2008 (end of EGEE-II) • Ending March 2010 Assume 35 M € for EGEE III Need first draft of EGEE-III proposal by Christmas By Bob Jones, 17 Oct 2006 Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

3. EGEE III/EGI workshop • The first meeting was in Geneva on October 16th-17th • October 16th was a PMB meeting on EGI • October 17th was a PMB/PEB meeting on EGEE III 09:00 Introduction (00h05') Ludek MATYSKA 09:05 Summary of EGI workshop (00h10') Ludek MATYSKA 09:15 Boundary conditions (00h15') Bob JONES 09:30 Technical Input (00h45') Erwin LAURE 10:45 Discussion of technical input (01h45') Erwin LAURE 14:00 Consortium (00h30') Bob JONES 14:30 Consortium discussion (01h00') 16:00 Wrap-up (01h00') Bob JONES 17:00 Close (00h20') • Roadmap for next steps defined Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

4. EGI Vision • Organises „seamless“ e-Infrastructure for ERA • Organises interoperability with other similar global activities • Promotes standardisation • Follows multi disciplinary approach • Supports dissemination • The EGI/NGI Relation • EGI = NGI federation • coordination functions attached to EGI i.e operational, policy etc. • NGI will provide the main part of the money (for resources, dissemination etc.) • NGI will govern EGI NGI=National Grid Initiative By Ludek Matyska, 17 Oct 2006 Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

5. EGI Design Project • What is the goal of the Design Project? • Conceptual Design Report(s) about the construction of EGI • Including a first prototype/skeleton of EGI, focusing on management (consortium issues, bylaws, rules …) instead of software • Defining a sustainable model to provide resources to the infrastructure • DoW or Proposal for EGI • EGI Design Project starts November 2007 • [6 months] for first phase • [9 months] for baby-EGI • EGI should start before end of EGEE-III (April 2009) and goes from there to the end of FP7 (>2013, 5 years) By Ludek Matyska, 17 Oct 2006 Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

6. [EGEE III] Overall Principles • Need to have NAs, SAs, and JRAs • EGEE-III needs to consolidate the existing work and prepare for a smooth transition to the NGI/EGI concept • Further decentralize activities where possible so that these activities can be absorbed by NGIs eventually • “centers of excellence” with operations, application support, training, dissemination • Focus on SAs and NAs • Plan JRAs such that they could be absorbed by appropriate NGIs or related projects • Exploit synergies with regional and support projects where possible • Make links more concrete and profitable for EGEE-III • Implement structural changes to address the issues discussed before • LCG will be in production mode • Need to ensure enough resources (hardware and people) are available to other sciences while maintaining stable production environment for LCG • Need to identify additional flagship applications from other domains • What follows are proposals how to change existing activities and create new or discontinue activities; EGEE-II structures that are not explicitly mentioned are supposed to continue along the lines of EGEE-II • NB: Naturally, not everybody agrees on everything written in here By Erwin Laure, 17 Oct 2006 Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

7. EGEE III proposed structure • Erwin’s proposal at the workshop: NA1: Management: include current NA5 NA2: Dissemination and Outreach: increase & move business to NA6 NA3: Training: Gilda moves to SA6 NA4: Application Support: “ROC structure”. App.specific devel. in JRAn NA5: Policies and International Collaborations: move to NA1 NA6: Business Support: new SA1: Operations: move user support to SA5 SA2: Network Support SA3: Integration, Testing, and Certification Note: only grid foundation SA4: Middleware Support: new, only grid foundation SA5: User Support: new SA6: Training and application Test-bed: new (Gilda) JRA1: Middleware Re-engineering: move to SA4 and JRAn JRA2: Quality Assurance: removed. QA in NA1, SA3, etc... JRAn: New: Define a couple of (few!) JRA activities to deal with specific middleware problems (high level services) Like TCG task forces now, e.g. workflows, MPI, Data Management, etc... Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

8. Comments during the workshop For what concerns the middleware (JRA1, SA4, JRAn) • Many agreed on the need to remove middleware development (including our godfather!) • main motivation being the ability of the project to go shopping for middleware on the market (e.g. national grid projects) • Many were in favour of keeping middleware development as it is now • main motivation being the extra value for the developers of having a strong connection (= commitment) to the infrastructure and for the infrastructure of having strong control over middleware development plans and schedules Other points • Agreement on creation of NA6 and SA6 • Not clear on SA5, and removal of JRA2 and NA5 • “ROC structure” for NA4 and structure of JRAn was very controversial Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

9. First draft of proposal • Proposal for a 2 years project by the Project office assembled from (some of the) the contributions of the PEB members • Circulated for the first time to the PEB members on 7/11 • Goal is to “provide a world-wide production quality computing grid infrastructure for a rapidly increasing number of application areas”: • after EGEE III there is EGI • 24*7 operations worldwide • grid foundation: support, development, integration and certification • high level grid services: only support to applications • VO and user support • collaboration on networking • standardization • business • dissemination • No explicit activity structure but the description represents Erwin’s proposal Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006

10. Timeline and Roadmap • 27 Oct - Research Infrastructures in FP7 Information day (Brussels) • 21 Nov – meeting with leaders of collaborating grid infrastructure projects & EU • BalticGrid, EELA, EUIndiaGrid, EUChinaGrid, EUMedGrid, SEE-GRID 2 • 1 Dec – JRU workshop in Brussels organised by EGEE • How to create a JRU (“JRU for dummies”) • 13-14 Dec 2006, Geneva: PMB Meeting to review EGI/EGEE-III progress • January 2007: Call opens • 16-18 Jan: Co-location with other EGEE-II meeting (PMB+AA) • 27 Feb: PMB Meeting for EGI/EGEE-III progress review • Spring 2007: Call closes • April 2008: EGEE-III could start 7 or 8 Dec 2006, Geneva: PEB on the draft proposal By Bob Jones, 17 Oct 2006 Claudio Grandi - JRA1 Aall Hands - Abingdon, 8 November 2006