Project Description

Application-related Services

• Data Management

• Digital archives: gLibrary provides an easy-to-use web front-end designed to save and organise multimedia assets on Grid-based storage resources
• Secure storage: a set of tools to store in a secure way and in an encrypted format confidential data (e.g., medical or financial records) on the Grid storage elements
• Cooperative annotation of data: support the sharing and search of data in a distributed and autonomous way

• Job management

• DIRAC broker: better match making and customised scheduling
• OurGrid broker: scheduling of bag-of-tasks jobs
• SHICA: workflow for OurGrid jobs
• WatchDog: monitoring and control of job execution on the gLite Worker Node
• BashReduce: efficient execution of data-intensive applications based on the MapReduce paradigm
• HybridCloud: seamless execution of applications in hybrid e-Infrastructures augmented with the capability of interfacing with cloud computing providers

• Catalogue and file management

• lcg-rec toolkit: recursive version of the lgc-* suite of commands
• DIRAC FC: DIRAC file catalogue

Infrastructure-related Services

• Support for resource centre deployment

• OurGrid middleware: support for the deployment of opportunistic P2P grid
• Interoperation gateways: allow desktop grids to interoperate with service grids
• gLite over Microsoft Windows platforms: a Windows port of the gLite middleware
• VO compliant virtual machine environments: use of virtual machine technology to facilitate VO deployment
• DIRAC middleware: improved scheduling for service grids
• BeeFS: aggregation of spare disk space in multiple desktops in a single Storage Element
• Customized virtual clusters

• Support for grid operation

• SAGE: Storage Accounting for Grid Environments
• Dashboard: monitoring of e-infrastructures

 

Back to WP6 presentation

The objective of the "Infrastructure and Application-oriented Services for User Communities" Work Package (WP6) is to increase the usability of Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCI) in general, and GISELA’s e-infrastructure in particular, by:

• Offering a portfolio of Application-oriented and Infrastructure-oriented services, including both services already available and new services to be developed during the course of the project;
• Helping WP2 to disseminate the GISELA’s portfolio of services, so that the benefits yield from their use is as broad as possible;
• Customising these services to attend particular requirements of the Virtual Research Communities (VRCs) supported by GISELA; and
• Providing, together with WP3 and WP4, comprehensive support to the users of the portfolio of services offered.

The goal is to develop and support grid services that facilitate the porting and execution of applications in DCI. For that, on the one side, full support will be provided for both application-related and infrastructure-related services that are already available, and, on the other side, new services that are identified as useful will be developed, tested, deployed in the GISELA e-infrastructure, and supported.

The work developed in this activity is to be carried out in close synergy with the other project activities and related projects. Close collaboration with WP4 will be required for supporting the test and deployment of the new services in the e-infrastructure. Also, discussions with WP5 will allow us to timely identify network requirements and anticipate possible issues. The portfolio of services that will be made available to the GISELA users is also useful to other communities. Collaboration with WP1 and WP2 will allow the identification of these communities that may profit from the GISELA’s service portfolio and the dissemination of their adoption by a wider audience.

Finally, coordination with the WP3 User Communities Support effort will be a key factor in the successful adoption of the application-related services by the GISELA’s user community.

The objective of the "Infrastructure and Application-oriented Services for User Communities" Work Package (WP6) is to increase the usability of Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCI) in general, and GISELA’s e-infrastructure in particular, by:

• Offering a portfolio of Application-oriented and Infrastructure-oriented services, including both services already available and new services to be developed during the course of the project;
• Helping WP2 to disseminate the GISELA’s portfolio of services, so that the benefits yield from their use is as broad as possible;
• Customising these services to attend particular requirements of the Virtual Research Communities (VRCs) supported by GISELA; and
• Providing, together with WP3 and WP4, comprehensive support to the users of the portfolio of services offered.

The goal is to develop and support grid services that facilitate the porting and execution of applications in DCI. For that, on the one side, full support will be provided for both application-related and infrastructure-related services that are already available, and, on the other side, new services that are identified as useful will be developed, tested, deployed in the GISELA e-infrastructure, and supported.

Online support can be obtained through the following documentation and tools:

• Documentation
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Mailing Lists
• Ticket System

The work developed in this activity is to be carried out in close synergy with the other project activities and related projects. Close collaboration with WP4 will be required for supporting the test and deployment of the new services in the e-infrastructure. Also, discussions with WP5 will allow us to timely identify network requirements and anticipate possible issues. The portfolio of services that will be made available to the GISELA users is also useful to other communities. Collaboration with WP1 and WP2 will allow the identification of these communities that may profit from the GISELA’s service portfolio and the dissemination of their adoption by a wider audience.

Finally, coordination with the WP3 User Communities Support effort will be a key factor in the successful adoption of the application-related services by the GISELA’s user community.

The softaware produce is made available in several Software Repositories. The work performed in the Work Package can be followed though a Management Tool.

The Work Package is subdivided into three tasks:

TWP6.1: Coordination of the Activity (led by UFCG)

This task is devoted to the coordination and management of the activity. Coordination includes the organisation of technical meetings involving the staff working in the activity, as well as multi-activity meetings involving staff of the other activities. The management includes actions like tracking the progress of the activities’ tasks, anticipating difficulties, devising contingency plans when necessary, identifying opportunities etc. Finally, the execution of the task also encompasses administrative duties such as the preparation of deliverables and reports, as well as budget management. The Activity Manager will be responsible for the execution of this task.

TWP6.2: Support and Customisation of Already Available Services (led by CNRS)

The EELA-2 project has developed a set of services that proved to be very useful to both application developers and system administrators. The goal of this task is to provide the necessary support so that more application developers and system administrators can utilise these services. This support may also include customisation of the services, so that they can serve particular requirements of application developers and system administrators.

TWP6.3: Development and Support of New Services (led by UFCG)

This task aims at developing new application-related and infrastructure-related grid services that can facilitate the use of the infrastructure by the application developers and the management of the e-infratructure by system administrators.

The e-Infrastructure deployed in the EELA-2 project and IS used in GISELA has a service part running gLite over dedicated resources and an opportunistic part running OurGrid over shared resources. The new services already identified are mainly target for deployment over shared desktops. Given the popularity of this type of resource and the fact that they are usually underutilised, the services provided will improve the reach and the usability of the e-Infrastructure as a whole. The following services are already part of the portfolio to be developed:

• Aggregation of spare disk space in multiple desktops in a single Storage Element;
• Efficient execution of data-intensive applications based on the Map-Reduce paradigm;
• Seamless execution of applications in hybrid e-Infrastructures augmented with the capability of interfacing with cloud computing providers.

Other useful service may be identified during the execution of the project and may be included in the portfolio of services to be developed. The priority is to develop services that:

• are useful for a large spectrum of applications; or
• are specially valuable for the Virtual Research Communities we aim at supporting.

WP6 Team

Edited by Francisco Brasileiro 29/04/2011