The EGEE project Fabrizio Gagliardi EGEE Project Director

1. The EGEE projectFabrizio GagliardiEGEE Project Director Workshop on Biomedical Informatics Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 EGEE is proposed as a project funded by the European Union under contract IST-2003-508833

2. Background • Networking, commodity computing and distributed software tools became ripe for Grid technology to start become available at the end of the 1990’s • Many public funded projects (in the US and in the EU) launched since • Grid computing a key activity of the EU programmes • Industrial and commercial Grids have been following (see a good sample on the www.cern.ch/gridcafe portal and also www.gridstart.org) • Major IT vendors involved in Grid activity Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 2

3. Prototypes: DataGrid • 9.8 M Euros EU funding over 3 years (twice as much from partners) • 90% for middleware and applications • 3 major applications: High Energy Physics, Earth Observation, Biomedical • Total of 21 partners, over 150 scientists, engineers and programmers from research and academic institutes as well as industrial companies • Three year phased developments & demos (2001-2003) • Several improved versions of middleware software (final release end 2003) • DataGrid testbed: more than 1000 CPUs at more than 15 sites (up to 40) • Software used by partner projects: DataTAG, CROSSGRID, GRACE Successful Final Review in February 2004 Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 3

4. EGEE: Why? • Access to a production quality grid will change the way science and business is done in Europe • Current Grid R&D projects run to completion within the next few months or next year • The EGEE partners have already made major progress in aligning national and regional Grid R&D efforts, in preparation for EGEE • EGEE will preserve the current strong momentum of the European Grid community and the enthusiasm of the hundreds of young European researchers already involved in EU Grid projects (>150 in EDG alone) Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 4

5. EGEE manifesto:Enabling Grids for E-science in Europe • Goal • Create a wide European Grid production quality infrastructure on top of present and future EU RN infrastructure • Build On: • EU and EU member states major investments in Grid Technology • International connections (US and AP) • Several pioneering prototype results • Large Grid development teams in EU require major EU funding effort • Approach • Leverage current and planned national and regional Grid programmes • Work closely with relevant industrial Grid developers, NRENs and US-AP projects Applications Grid infrastructure Geant network Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 5

6. EGEE: Partners • Leverage national resources in a more effective way for broader European benefit • 70 leading institutions in 27 countries, federated in regional Grids Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 6

7. EGEE Activities 24% Joint Research 28% Networking • JRA1: Middleware Engineering and Integration • JRA2: Quality Assurance • JRA3: Security • JRA4: Network Services Development • NA1:Management • NA2:Dissemination and Outreach • NA3: User Training and Education • NA4:Application Identification and Support • NA5:Policy and International Cooperation Emphasis in EGEE is on operating a production grid and supporting the end-users 48% Services • SA1: Grid Operations, Support and Management • SA2: Network Resource Provision Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 7

8. EGEE “Virtuous Cycle” A new scientific community makes first contacts to EGEE through outreach events organized by Networking Activities Follow-up meetings by applications specialists may lead to definition of new requirements for the infrastructure Peer communication and dissemination events featuring established users then attract new communities If approved, the requirements are implemented by the Middleware Activities The Networking Activities then provide appropriate training to the community in question, so that it becomes an established user After integration and testing, the new middleware is deployed by the Service Activities Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 8

9. EGEE Service Activity (I) • Create, operate, support and manage a production quality infrastructure • Offered services: • Middleware deployment and installation • Software and documentation repository • Grid monitoring and problem tracking • Bug reporting and knowledge database • VO services • Grid management services Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 9

10. EGEE Service Activity (II) • Resource Centers Month 1: 10 Month 15: 20 Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 10

11. EGEE Middleware Activity • Hardening and re-engineering of existing middleware functionality, leveraging the experience of partners • Activity concentrated in few major centers • Key services: Resource Access • Data Management (CERN) • Information Collection and Accounting (UK) • Resource Brokering (Italy) • Quality Assurance (France) • Grid Security (Northern Europe) • Middleware Integration (CERN) • Middleware Testing (CERN) Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 11

12. EGEE Networking Activity • Dissemination and outreach • Lead by TERENA • User training and induction • Lead by Unv Edin. (NeSC) • Application identification and support • Two pilot application centers (for high energy physics and biomedical grids) • One more generic component dealing with longer term recruitment and support of other communities • Policy and International cooperation • Establish Grid policy forum • Coordinate relations with other projects (EU and beyond) map points indicate federations and are not geographically precise Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 12

13. EGEE Applications • EGEE Scope : ALL-Inclusive for academic applications (open to industrial and socio-economic world as well) • The major success criterion of EGEE: how many satisfied users from how many different domains ? • 5000 users (3000 after year 2) from at least 5 disciplines • Two pilot applications selected to guide the implementation and certify the performance and functionality of the evolving infrastructure: Physics & Bioinformatics Application domains and timelines are for illustration only Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 13

14. The pilot applications • High Energy Physics with LHC Computing Grid (www.cern.ch/lcg) relies on a Grid infrastructure to store and analyse petabytes of real and simulated data. LCG is a major source of resources, requirements and a hard deadlines with no conventional solution available • In Biomedics several communities are facing equally daunting challenges to cope with the flood of bioinformatics and healthcare data. Need to access large and distributed non-homogeneous data and important on-demand computing requirements Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 14

15. LCG • LCG: a collaboration of • The LHC experiments • The Regional Computing Centres • Physics institutes • Mission: • Prepare and deploy the computing environment that will be used by the experiments to analyse the LHC data • Strategy: • Integrate thousands of computers at dozens of participating institutes worldwide into a global computing resource • Rely on software being developed in advanced grid technology projects, both in Europe and in the USA Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 15

16. Biomedical Projects and EGEE Lessons learnt from the DataGrid prototype: • Need to create a large users’ community from Biomedical sciences (like in High Energy Physics) • Inter-application forum in DataGrid was very useful: experiences and needs can be compared to produce a common set of prioritized requirements • Need for technically competent teams to help deploy biomedical applications • Biomedical sites must contribute computing resources to the grid to gain practical experience • Need to identify large scale applications (like LHC) that a united community can buy into and which can act as a vehicle for pushing grids in the biomedical domain Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 16

17. EGEE and Industry • Industry will benefit from EGEE in several ways: • as partner • through collaboration with individual EGEE partners, participate in specific activities where relevant skills and manpower are available increase know-how on Grid technologies • as user • specific industrial sectors will be targeted as potential users of the Grid infrastructure for R&D applications • particularly attractive to high-tech SMEs (major computing resources within grasp) • as provider • long-term maintenance of established Grid services (call centres, support centres and computing resource provider centres) Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 17

18. Conclusions • EGEE is expected to deliver a production Grid infrastructure for scientific applications in Europe • Important to have early adopters and applications representatives in all phases of the project • Biomedical and physics are the pilot applications domains that will lead the exploitation of the EGEE Grid infrastructure • Biomedical applications seem to share with Physics and other data intensive sciences a number of computing problems which can ideally benefit from the EGEE Grid infrastructure Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 18

19. Further Information To know more: EU EGEE – www.eu-egee.org EU DataGrid – www.eu-edg.org Other Grid projects – www.gridstart.org Workshop on Biomedical Informatics, Brussels , March 18-19, 2004 - 19