The OMII-Europe Project and the Impact of European Union Funding

1. The OMII-Europe Project and the Impact of European Union Funding Dr Alistair Dunlop University of Southampton

2. Talk Overview • EU Funding • What’s the Motivation • Preparing a bid • Running a project • OMII-Europe • How has EU funding shaped OMII-Europe? • An overview of the project and its constituent parts

3. Motivation - Why pursue EU funding for OMII-Europe? I • Preface… • OMII-Soton already exists with goals to • Reuse, reengineer and integrate grid software components that have already been developed within the UK e-science programme • EU officials liked OMII model and wanted an equivalent within EU • Also exists within USA in NMI • Hence a call was created within FP6 (framework Programme 6) to fund an equivalent entity

4. Motivation - Why pursue EU funding for OMII-Europe? II • Primary reasons to lead a proposal • Protect “OMII” brand • We were expected to do it • If we didn’t do it someone else would have • Addresses sustainability of institute through diversity of funding sources • Primary reasons why NOT to LEAD a proposal • Want money to do our own interesting research

5. Prerequisites before starting to preparing an EU bid • 1: Find the right EU call (cordis.europa.eu) and read the call, rules, requirements • Requirements include specifying: • Closing Date • Composition of Consortium (Number of partners and which member states) • Instruments available (the format needed for the proposal) • 2: Go to Brussels to talk to the relevant unit head/s to find explore a proposed call • More subtle requirements • Approximate budget available/suggested • Which institutions to include/exclude • Tone of proposal • Level of competition

6. Before writing a proposal… • Meet with prospective partners to: • Understand what they want to do – but don’t agree! • Get commitment from them to help and not compete • Describe the level of budget available and their share • Ensure they understand the EU rules as this impacts what partners can do: • In FP6 research activities are 50% funded. (1:1) • In FP7 this is 75%. (3:1) • Sketch an outline proposal that conforms to the EU instrument, identifying partners to activities and partner funding

7. Outline proposal… • The outline proposal for OMII-Europe was not exactly as first thought: • The Instrument dictates certain tasks in the proposal • I3 (Integrated Infrastructure Initiatives) muct include Network Activities, Service Activities and Joint Research Activities • Politics dictates inclusion of certain partners • The proposal has to be written to fit partners not the other way around • => You can shape a proposal but you can’t dictate it

8. The full bid • Preparing the Bid: • Admin part (takes a lot longer than you would expect) • “Part B” or the “Description of Work” • Approx 100 – 150 pages of text conforming to template describing what will be done • All partners must sign this off • Takes approximately 3 months of pretty much full-time work • After closing date ~ 2 months to hear if proposal is shortlisted • => proposal is fundable • Hearings ~ 6 weeks thereafter to rank fundable proposals • Outcome ~ 6 weeks later

9. Before you start… • Negotiations with commission • Take at least 3 months • Could cut budget and insist on changes to proposal (not technical) • Need to complete a “consortium agreement” – allow at least 3 months • Total time from submission to start is approx 8 months to 1 year

10. The good and bad news • Good News: • Finance department is experienced and very helpful in managing finances of EU grants • Plenty of other people who can help • Gives you plenty of time to get a good project manager in place! • After you lead one project you make a name for yourself and get invited to participate in others • Good news for individual researchers employed on project – travel, salary, etc... • Bad News: • Large administrative overhead with little resource • The admin costs are lumped with your research costs so to achieve balance you forfeit some research funding

11. Impact of EU funding on OMII-Europe • Emphasis changed from “Reuse, Reengineer and Integrate” grid components to “Interoperability and Quality Assurance of grid components” due to partner contributions • The partner list resulted in grid components and grid middleware distributions being included that were not initially considered • The Instrument for submitting the proposal required the inclusion of tasks that were not foreseen

12. An Overview of the OMII-Europe project • EU funded FP6 project (RI) • Starting May 2006, initial 2 year duration • 16 partners (8 European, 4 USA, 4 Chinese) • Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute for Europe • Complimentary to existing national programmes (OMII-UK, NMI, C-OMEGA, OMII-China…) • Goal is to provide key software components for building e-infrastructures • Project will demonstrate “proof of concept” with expectation for a follow-on project in FP7

13. What will OMII-Europe do? • Initial focus on providing common interfaces and integration of major Grid software infrastructures • Common services: • Database Access, Virtual Organisation Management, Portal, Accounting, Job Submission and Job Monitoring • These represent many of the outputs from the standards function groups • Capability to add additional services • Emphasis on porting and re-engineering work, not developing from scratch • Infrastructure integration • Initial EGEE/UNICORE/Globus interoperability • Interoperable security framework

14. OMII-Europe guiding principles • Committed to standards process • Implementing agreed open standards and working withstandards process (GGF/Oasis) • Quality Assurance • Published methodology and compliance test • All software components have public QA process and audit trail • Working with similar projects and organisations to agree policies • Impartiality • OMII-Europe is “honest broker” providing impartial advice/information on e-infrastructures

15. What will OMII-Europe deliver? • Repository of open-source, quality assured software services for gLite/EGEE, Globus, UNICORE and CROWNgrid • Some services bundled with major grid distributions • Initial integration work with EGEE, UNICORE and Globus • Public reports on grid infrastructures • Initial benchmark results • Impartial advice and information • Evaluation infrastructure to “test” services • User support and training for services

16. Who benefits from OMII-Europe? • E-infrastructure providers • Choice of grid software to deploy can be determined by selecting the most appropriate system to manage resources. • Achieved through common interfaces and interoperability of grid systems • Decisions not constrained by membership of a particular VO • Not required to deploy and manage multiple grid distributions • E-science users • Common methods for accessing grid Infrastructures • Access to resources beyond the immediate e-infrastructure running a specific grid distribution • Achieved through low level interoperability of Grid distributions • Users not restricted to a specific, fixed set of resources • E-science application developers • Applications can be deployed and run on multiple grid environments through adherence to common services • Not required to develop different solutions for different grids

17. Why Globus, UNICORE, gLite and CROWN? • Minimal significant set: • gLite is a complete set of middleware developed within EGEE and is deployed to create a grid containing more than 150 sites and 30 countries • UNICORE is a major EU and national middleware initiative and is deployed at many supercomputer sites, in particular those available through DEISA • Globus is the world-leading open-source platform for Grid computing developed within the USA and is used for many research projects world-wide • All three grid platforms have significant user bodies within Europe • CROWNgrid is the middleware used on the major Chinese grid infrastructure

18. Database Service • Implementation of the OGSA-DAI specification from the DAIS-WG within the Data function group of GGF • OGSA-DAI service federates data resources with different support mechanisms (Relational/XML Databases/flat files) allowing uniform access across these resources • Number of other data specifications emerging that may be considered later. • transaction management; byte IO; Grid file systems etc • DAIS implementation already available for Globus 4 – • Work is to port to UNICORE and gLite – Alpha releases scheduled for May 2007. • Evaluating OGSADai4UnicoreGS

19. Job Submit and Job Monitoring Service • Implementation of the JSDL (job submission description language) and BES (Basic execution service) specifications from the Compute working group at GGF • Common way to specify and control jobs (abstraction of O/S and cluster controller) • Other specifications such as scheduling, but above are essential and well developed with implementations • Work is to make BES and JSDL available on Globus, UNICORE and gLite • Initial version for UNICORE available in May 2007 • JSDL translator (using XSLT) for gLite in testing

20. Virtual Organisation Management Service • Authorisation service available for Globus and gLite. • Provides information on the user's relationship with Virtual Organization: groups, roles and capabilities • Work to make VOMS available under UNICORE and to extend VOMS with SAML support • SAML (Security Authorisation Markup Language) from OASIS Technical Committee. (standard for XML exchanging authentication and authorisation data between security domains) • Alpha version for UNICORE with SAML support scheduled for May 2007

21. Accounting Service • Implementation of the Resource Usage Service (RUS) from the management working group within GGF • Tracks use of resources (accounting in traditional UNIX sense), but not concerned with payment • Closely related to Usage Record (UG-WG) within GGF • Specification available for public comment • Alpha version of RUS (or equivalent) available in May 2007 for Globus, gLite and UNICORE

22. Portal Service • Integration of the Gridsphere portal framework with Globus, UNICORE and gLite and provide portlets for job submit, accounting, etc… • Provide application level portability at a portlet level • Portlets available for main OMII-Europe services

23. Additional Services • Current solution: • Chinese partners will make all services available on Chinese CROWNgrid infrastructure • In May 2007, launch of the second round of service integration

24. OMII-Europe JRA1 re-engineering activities

25. OMII-Europe Infrastructure Integration • This activity goes beyond the adoption of common services and focuses on full grid infrastructure integration through employing: • A common security infrastructure • Much similarity (X509) and differences (handling of proxies, authorisation, anonymity and auditing) • Intention to define a common security base • Provide a strengthened form of X509 credential management through using Myproxy • job migration between Globus/gLite/UNICORE • Builds on Globus/UNICORE Grip project • Close collaboration with GGF GIN WG

26. Project Structure and Effort Allocation • Networking activities • Management, Outreach, Training • 8% Person Effort • Service Activities • Repository, QA, Support • 25% Person Effort • Joint Research Activities • Re-engineering, new services, integration, benchmarking • 67% Person Effort

27. Effort (Person Years) per Activity

28. OMII-Europe Project Partners 114 person years over 2 years, 5 million Euro, 4 major Grid infrastructures

29. OMII-Europe project summary • Interoperability is difficult not because of technical issues but because it requires agreement • No one wants to be seen to “lose out” to someone else • OMII-Europe has support from the major grid Infrastructure providers to deliver interoperability • No point to be trying to solve the problem without vendor support • OMII-Europe’s emphasis on standards provides a non-biased approach towards interoperability • An open independent process needs to be used to arrive at technical decisions • Achieving interoperability is a long term goal, don’t try and eat an elephant in one go! • OMII-Europe will improve overall USABILITY of grid Infrastructures and improve INTEROPERABILITY of grid infrastructures over the next two years

30. Concluding Comments • EU research budget is moving towards 2% of total EU GDP. • Getting a share isn’t that difficult but you need to be politically aware • It provides a means to support real collaborative research within the EU • Participating is far easier than being coordinating partner