Co-ordination & Harmonisation of
Advanced e-Infrastructures
for Research and Education Data Sharing
Research Infrastructures
Grant Agreement n. 306819
Standard-based Interoperability amongst
Local, Grid and Cloud Resources
Distributed Worldwide
Prof. Roberto Barbera, University of Catania and INFN
e-AGE 2012 – Dubai (UAE), 12-13 December 2012
Outline

Introductory considerations

The Catania Science Gateway framework

The CHAIN worldwide interoperability program

The evolution to «social» Science Gateways

Summary and conclusions
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Evolution of distributed computing
Cost of hw
Cost of networks
80’s-90’s
Cluster
Computing
90’s-00’s
Grid
Computing
00’s-10’s
Cloud
Computing
Mainframe
Computing
Power of COTS
WAN bandwidth
3
The “Global” Grid
CNGrid
NKN &
Garuda
GISELA
EUAsiaGrid
SAGrid &
SANREN
5
The “non-Global” middleware
CNGrid
Genesis II
NKN &
Garuda
GISELA
EUAsiaGrid
SAGrid &
SANREN
6
Using Grids is not straightforward 
The eResearch2020 report
(http://www.eresearch2020.eu/eResearch%20Brochure%20EN.pdf)
•
Some barriers in the adoption of Grids:








Changes on Grids means changes on applications
Time required to adapt usual workflows
Lack of structure to support anonymous access
Download and installation of applications
Interface
Slow to get to compared to other resources
Difficult to use in the beginning
Time spent to get the application compiled and
running
8
Some figures…
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The cloud stack
10
A very «cloudy» sky…
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… and difficult choices to make
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The path to technology uptake –
Where are we with e-Infrastructures ?
The Rogers “bell-shape” curve - Rogers, E. M. (1962), “Diffusion of Innovations”, Glencoe: Free Press.
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Interoperability –
Does this definition apply to e-Infrastructures ?

Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of
diverse systems and organizations to work together
(inter-operate). The term is often used in a technical systems
engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking
into account social, political, and organizational factors that
impact system to system performance;

According to ISO/IEC 2382-01 (Information Technology
Vocabulary, Fundamental Terms), interoperability is "The
capability to communicate, execute programs, or
transfer data among various functional units in a
manner that requires the user to have little or no
knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units".
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The Catania
Science Gateway framework
Embedded Applications
App. 2
.......App. N
Science
Gateway
App. 1
Administrator
Power User
Basic User
Standard-based (SAGA)
middleware-independent
Grid Engine
Users from
different
organisations
having different
roles and
privileges
Grid/Cloud/Local middleware supported so far
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AuthN & AuthZ Schema
Science Gateway
Authorisation
1. Register to
a Service
GrIDP
(“catch-all”)
LDAP
2. Sign in
(“catchall”)
Social
Networks’
Bridge IdP
IDP_y
.........
IDPCT
20
Identity Federations in the world
(https://refeds.org)
16 million people worldwide
22
The CHAIN Worldwide Interoperability Demo
(http://science-gateway.chain-project.eu)

To demonstrate that:

e-Infrastructures can be made interoperable to
each other at user application level using
standards
 with the meaning of interoperability given
above;

VRC-specific applications can be submitted from
anywhere and run everywhere
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The Catania Grid & Cloud Engine
Liferay Portlets
Science
GW 1
Science
GW 2
Grid/Cloud
Engine
Science
GW 3
eToken
Server
Science GW Interface
Data Engine
Job Engine
Users
Track &
Monit.
SAGA/JSAGA API
Users
Tracking
DB
Grid/Cloud/Local MWs
Modified
New
New
Modified
Modified
New
CHAIN Demo Contributors
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CHAIN Demo Status
(http://science-gateway.chain-project.eu/demo-status)
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CHAIN Demo Status
(http://science-gateway.chain-project.eu/demo-status)
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Some considerations…

About 1 billion people have accounts on the
existing Social Networks (many of the
researchers we are targeting with eInfrastructures are among them)

Web-based social networking accounts for
more than 10-15% of the total time spent
online in the whole world

Social Networks’ are by far the most used
(liked) virtual environments in the world
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“Social” Science Gateways
(http://www.facebook.com/pages/Catania-ScienceGateways/220075701389624)
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A Science Gateway as
a Facebook application…
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Uptake of Catania Science Gateways
(as of the end of October 2012)
Users from 206 Organisations in 44 Countries
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Science Gateways and clouds –
The MyCloud service for IaaS/PaaS
Powered by:
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Summary and conclusions

e-Infrastructures can be very beneficial platforms for many users,
provided they are really «easy to use» and users are at their centre

The Catania Science Gateway framework, with support for Identity
Federations changes the way Grid infrastructures are used, hugely
widening their potential user base across continents and organisations,
especially non-IT experts and the “citizen scientist”

The adoption of standards (JSR 286, SAGA, SAML, etc.) represents a
concrete investment towards sustainability

The CHAIN worldwide interoperability program demonstrated that,
through Science Gateways based on standards, users can really access
global e-Infrastructures in a seamless and ubiquitous way independently
of the underlying middleware (local, grid, cloud)

We propose to use the same approach in CHAIN-REDS to gather
distributed resources from all over the region and the world and get a
truly global e-Infrastructure, yet respecting local specificities and
exploiting competences of all participating organisations
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Thank you !
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