The UK e-Science Core Programme
Annual Report
Year 1: April 2001 – April 2002
Contents
Executive Summary
1
Introduction
2
The Core e-Science Programme
Programme Team
Structure of the Programme
UK e-Science Grid
Centre Projects
Promotion of Middleware
IRC Grid Projects
Support for e-Science Projects
International Collaboration and Outreach
e-Science Network Requirements
2
2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Committees and Bodies within the Core Programme
10
Meetings Attended
11
Programme and Project Management
11
Finances
12
Conclusions
12
Executive Summary
This report gives an overview of the first twelve months of activity of the Core e-Science
Programme. A more detailed report of the activities is also available and is referred to occasionally
in this document. The EPSRC, on behalf of all the Research Councils, and the Department of Trade
and Industry are managing the programme.
The Core Programme has been structured around six key elements:
1. Implementation of a National e-Science Grid based on a network of e-Science Centres
2. Promotion of Generic Grid Middleware Development
3. Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) Grid Projects
4. Establishment of a support structure for e-Science Pilot Projects
5. Support for involvement in International activities and outreach activities
6. Support for e-Science networking requirements
Each of these key elements is outlined and the status of the developments so far. A National Centre
and eight Regional Centres have been created and a UK e-Science Grid has been initiated across
these centres.
It is essential that there is industrial collaboration and buy in, particularly on the development of the
middleware to support e-Science activities. The Core Programme is proving successful in this
regard, through industrial projects at the e-Science centres and other projects. During this first year
of the programme there has been a shift in the industrial participation in Grid activities, with the
many high tech companies such as IBM, Sun, HP, Oracle and others all having declared support for
Open Source Grid middleware. The programme is also funding projects in middleware through an
Open Call.
Projects based on the four existing EPSRC computational Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations
(IRC) have also been funded to enable them to consider the implications of Grid technology for
their research directions. In addition, two collaborative projects combining the software
technologies of the Equator and AKT IRCs with the MIAS application project have been funded. In
effect these projects, each constitute a sort of ‘Grand Challenge’ pilot project in ‘e-Healthcare’.
A Grid Support Centre has been created to support the e-Science pilot projects and other e-Science
activities. The Centre provides telephone and email support for the use of grid middleware and
related issues. It is also responsible for the digital certificate authorisation for e-Science
applications.
A Grid Network Team has been created to assist application developers in understanding network
requirements. The team are also looking at the long-term network requirements for Grid
applications.
It is important to the success of the programme that it is sufficiently integrated with other related
international activities. A number of funding opportunities to assist in this area have been put in
place. The directorate have ensured that leading developers in this technology are involved in the
programme either as technical advisors or through some similar route. The programme is seen as
leading the way in Europe. Demonstrators have been developed which are now being used in
educational and outreach activities. The demonstrators include applications from each of the
Research Councils.
The planned financial commitment level has been met for the first year.
The programme is by nature complex and we provide an overview of the management mechanisms
for the overall activity and the individual projects. Part of the co-ordination of projects involves the
a database at the National e-Science Centre which is viewable by any one on the Internet and which
also has an interface indicating what areas projects are involved in.
1
1. Introduction
The e-Science Core Programme has OST funding of £15M. This sum is augmented by an
allocation of £20M from the Department of Trade and Industry making a total of £35M. The
programme is being managed by the EPSRC on behalf of all the Research Councils.
As is common in DTI programmes, the DTI contribution of £20M requires a matching contribution
from industry. It is also expected that there will be industrial contributions to the individual
Research Council e-Science pilot projects making a total industrial commitment to the e-Science
programme of well over £20M. The aim of the Core Programme is to support the e-Science pilot
projects of the different Research Councils and work with industry in developing robust, ‘industrial
strength’ generic grid middleware. Requirements and lessons learnt in the different e-Science
applications will inform the development of more stable and functional grid middleware that can
assist the e-Science experiments and be of relevance to industry and commerce.
2. The Core e-Science Programme
Goal
The overall goal of the e-Science Core Programme is to identify the key generic middleware
requirements arising from the e-Science pilot projects. In collaboration with scientists, computer
scientists and industry, the programme has a mandate to develop a framework that will promote the
emergence of robust, industrial strength Grid middleware that will not only underpin individual
application areas but also be of relevance to industry and commerce. The middleware developed
within this programme must be to Open Source or to Open Standards.
2.1 The e-Science Core Programme Team
The Director of the programme is Professor Tony Hey who is seconded to the EPSRC to direct the
programme on behalf of all the Research Councils. Dr Anne E Trefethen acts as Professor Hey’s
deputy and Dr James Fleming is the Associate Programme Manager at the EPSRC. Krys
Bartoszewska and Carol Becker provide the programme support at EPSRC. The DTI half of the
team consists of Ray Browne, who is the e-Science team leader at the DTI and who co-ordinates all
the DTI activity within the programme and his colleagues Lee Vousden and Jackie Whalley.
2.2 Structure of the Core Programme
The Core Programme has been structured around six key elements:
1. Implementation of a National e-Science Grid Testbed based on a network of Regional eScience Centres
2. Promotion of Generic Grid Middleware Development
3. Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) Grid Projects
4. Establishment of a support structure for e-Science Pilot Projects
5. Support for involvement in International activities and outreach activities
6. Support for e-Science networking requirements
We briefly discuss each of these activities below for each we present the goals and deliverables of
that key element and the status to date.
2
2.3 The UK e-Science Grid and the e-Science Centres
Goal
There is an urgent need for the UK to develop a nucleus of people who have experience in the detail
of running a Grid. A primary role for each Centre is therefore to donate a specific amount of
computing and storage resource for use in the construction of a national e-Science Grid. The
donated resources range from time on supercomputers and commodity clusters to databases and
other repositories. Gaining experience in the use of digital certificates for single sign-on and
authentication across the Grid is a key purpose of this work and sorting out problems with the
security, firewalls and policy issues of each of these sites is a difficult task.
In order to have the activity succeed in developing technologies that will go beyond the end of the
programme and be taken up by industry, it is important to have industry engaged in the programme.
There are two components to this involvement, education and understanding of the something of the
technologies, and also the development itself.
In addition each Centre has a responsibility to establish an appropriate regional outreach
programme. This could take various forms – from a seminar series to joint projects and/or visits to
relevant organizations in the region. The National Centre is funded more substantially for such
activities, which include running training courses and a national seminar series.
Outputs/Deliverables:
1.
2.
3.
4.
A working UK e-Science Grid
An appropriate-scale Regional Outreach programme.
A national Outreach programme with training courses and a national seminar series.
Full commitment of the budget to relevant collaborative industrial projects producing useful
generic grid middleware
5. Securing significant additional funding, obtained by the Centres
6. Establishing good working relationships with PPARC Tier 1 and 2 Centres
7. Expanding the scope of the National e-Science Grid beyond the initial 10 university sites.
8. Industry engagement in development of software.
9. Technology transfer academic to industry and industry to academic.
10. Setting up and operating an e-Science Institute.
Status
Nine e-Science Centres have been established at the locations shown on the map of the UK in
Figure 1.
Figure 1: UK e-Science Grid
Belf
ast
3
National e-Science Centre
(www.nesc.ac.uk)
Belfast Regional Centre
(www.qub.ac.uk\escience)
Cambridge Regional Centre
(www.cms.cam.ac.uk/grid.html)
Cardiff Regional Centre
(www.wesc.ac.uk)
London Regional Centre
(www.lesc.ic.ac.uk)
North
East Regional Centre
Newca
(www.neresc.ac.uk)
stleWest Regional Centre
North
(www.esnw.ac.uk)
Oxford Regional Centre
(e-science.ox.ac.uk)
Southampton Regional Centre
(www.e-science.soton.ac.uk)
Hinx
ton
A National e-Science Centre has been established in Edinburgh, managed jointly by Glasgow and
Edinburgh Universities. Eight other Regional Centres have been established – in Belfast, Cardiff,
Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Cambridge, London (Imperial College) and Southampton - giving
coverage across the UK. Manchester currently operates the UK’s national Supercomputer service.
Figure 1 also shows the Rutherford and Daresbury Laboratory sites of CCLRC. These national
laboratories are key sites of the UK e-Science Grid. The Hinxton site near Cambridge is also shown
in Figure 1: Hinxton hosts the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the Sanger Centre and an
MRC Institute. This constitutes one of the major centres of genomic data in the world. It is therefore
important that this site is linked to the e-Science Grid with sufficient bandwidth to support a number
of e-Science bioinformatics projects.
The National Centre in Edinburgh has also been funded to establish an ‘e-Science Institute’. This
Institute is already organizing a programme of multidisciplinary research seminars covering a wide
range of topics, with scientists and experts from all over the world. Their brief is to make the
Institute an internationally known Centre for stimulating intellectual debate on all aspects of eScience.
The Centres also have a centre-specific DTI budget (£3M NeSC: £1M Regional – see above) to
develop suitable Grid Middleware projects collaborating with industry. This is part of the effort to
engage industry, to ensure that ‘UK Plc’ understands the technology and is in a position to exploit
the Grid in business and commerce.
In addition, AccessGrid nodes have been established in each Centre to aid collaboration both
within and outside the UK. The AccessGrid system was developed at Argonne National Laboratory
in the USA and makes use of MBONE and Multicast technologies to provide a more natural videoconferencing experience between multiple sites that allows direct integration of Grid simulations
and visualisation. This system allows easy interaction between the Centres and will be used to
experiment with innovative ways of working and teaching. At the present time all but one of the
centres has an operative AccessGrid node. Implementing the AccessGrid took longer than
anticipated due to problems with multicast across the academic network.
The Centres are contributing a heterogeneous collection of resources, including supercomputer and
cluster computing systems as well as diverse data storage systems. (A full list of these resources can
be found in the full version of this annual report.) These resources will constitute the UK e-Science
Grid and will be used both as a test platform for new Grid middleware and as a resource available
for Centre industrial projects. An Engineering Task Force (ETF) has been tasked with the
implementation of this Grid (see Committees and Bodies section of report). The members of the
Task Force are from the e-Science centres and are led by Dr David Boyd, CCLRC as part of the
Grid Support Centre’s team.
The Cambridge e-Science Centre has also been chosen to act as the NERC e-Science Centre,
providing specific, focussed support for the NERC community. Each Centre produces a rolling
quarterly report that acts as a report on the previous quarter and a plan for the upcoming quarter.
They are also required to have a six monthly Centre review at which the programme’s Technical
Advisory Group and/or e-Science Steering Committee members can participate (see Programme
management section for detail).
The Websites of all of the Centres are following a template developed at NeSC, thereby creating a
UK e-Science Grid ‘branding’.
Centre Projects
The criteria for a Centre industrial project is that it is addressing a generic grid middleware issue,
that it will result in an open source/open standard solution and of course that there is industrial
collaboration. The extent of the contribution from industry is somewhat under the control of the
4
centre directors. The portfolio of projects from each Centre must have a 50% contribution from
industry but any given project might be slightly above or below this figure. The proposals for
projects are reviewed by members of TAG and the projects must be based on the following
description.
An e-Science Grid project must involve collaborative sharing of distributed resources – computing,
data and/or facilities – in a secure manner. The Globus toolkit provides digital certificates through
the Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI) for single sign-on to resources and user authentication. The
Grid Support Centre at CCLRC has set up a Certificate Authority (CA) to issue digital certificates
for this purpose. The Globus toolkit currently offers support for GSI and remote computing
services, file access and fast data transfer. An alternative approach for data-centric problems
could be to use the GSI package with Web Services, looking towards the Grid Service
implementation of Globus 3.0, incorporating the Open Grid Standards Architecture (OGSA), now
being taken forward for standardisation. (N.B. This is likely to be available from December 2002).
To date 11 centre projects have been funded, and a further 9 are under consideration (decisions
expected imminently). It is anticipated that a further 10-12 projects will be funded by July of 2002.
The projects range from middleware for telemedicine and engineering optimisation to generic tools
for understanding workflow.
2.4 Promotion of Grid Middleware Development
Goal
This is an essential component of the Core Programme. The challenge is to obtain Grid middleware
requirements from all the e-Science pilots and deliver to each of the different Research Council
communities Grid middleware and tools that the users welcome and use. At the same time, a
dialogue with the relevant parts of the IT industry must be established to engage their interest in
developing industrial-strength versions of the Grid middleware to support and enable e-Business
opportunities. Industry also needs to be convinced of the value of an Open Standards approach to
Grid middleware. The engagement with industry will be both directly via the Office of the Core
Programme Director and each of the e-Science Centres. The Open Call for Grid middleware
projects is important both for its openness and for its flexibility framework for assembling relevant
consortia and projects. A major challenge will be to coordinate the software outputs from all these
efforts as far as is reasonable.
Deliverables/Outputs:
1. Requirements analyses from each of the different research communities
2. Identification and implementation of generic middleware component/tool valued by each
research community
3. Commitment by major parts of the IT industry for an Open Standards approach to Grid
middleware
4. Delivery of significant components of Grid middleware that are internationally valued and
known to have been developed in the UK
5. Coordination of individual Centre and Open Call industrial projects to a reasonable extent
Status
In order to have the UK programme begin on an equal footing we have provided projects with a
common starting point for Grid middleware. The initial Grid middleware selected is the same as
that used by NASA in their Information Power Grid (IPG) and includes Globus, SRB (Storage
Resource Broker) from San Diego, and Condor from Wisconsin. The IPG may be termed an ‘IntraGrid’ - since the NASA laboratories connected are all part of one organisation. In the case of the
UK e-Science Grid, the Grid connects different universities with different IT policies, firewalls and
so on. This is a good test of the basic Globus infrastructure and the digital certificate based security
system.
5
The Core Programme is in discussions with major IT companies such as IBM, Sun, Oracle and
Microsoft, as well as with the Globus, Condor and SRB teams concerning the future development of
Grid middleware. In this respect, it is encouraging that both IBM and Sun have given strong
endorsements to working with the Globus team to take forward the production of improved and
robust Grid middleware. The software that will emerge will offer considerably more functionality
than the present Grid middleware and will also be produced to industrial quality.
A major task for the Core Programme is the capture of requirements for the Grid infrastructure from
each of the e-Science pilot projects. These include computational, data storage and networking
requirements as well as the desired Grid middleware functionality. In order that the projects do not
dissipate their energies by fruitless re-explorations of common ground, the Core Programme has
commissioned a number of reports on the present state of Grid middleware. Reports on Globus,
SRB/Databases, and .NET are currently available at the NeSC website (see
http://umbriel.dcs.gla.ac.uk/NeSC/general/technical_papers/).
A Grid Architecture Task Force (ATF) has been set up, led by Malcolm Atkinson, Director of the
National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh, to look at overall architectural directions for the Grid (see
http://umbriel.dcs.gla.ac.uk/NeSC/general/teams/atf.html). They are tasked with producing a ‘eScience Grid Road Map’ for Grid middleware development. The ATF is tasked with identifying
some specific short-term goals (given the pilot requirements) as well as identifying longer-term
research issues. In addition, a Grid DataBase Task Force (DBTF), led by Norman Paton from
Manchester, has been set up to examine the question of Grid middleware interfaces to Relational
DataBase Management Systems and the federation of different data sources (see
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/grid-db/). Their preliminary ideas have been discussed with the Globus
team, DataGrid, SRB and with IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. The DBTF has both a short term remit to look at developing an interface with some minimal useful functionality as soon as possible - and
a longer term remit – to look at research issues beyond flat files and relational data. To that end
they have produced a requirements document created by speaking with all active projects.
Initial ideas from the DBTF point towards the implementation of a database interface in terms of a
‘Grid Services’ model along the lines of Web Services. This leads to the idea of the Grid
middleware designed as a ‘Service Oriented Architecture’ with Grid services consumed by higher
level applications. Reports from both task forces have been submitted to the Global Grid Forum as
white papers, which were discussed at the last Global Grid Forum. It is important that at least a
subset of standard protocols that go beyond the present Globus model are agreed as quickly as
possible in order to ensure that the Grid middleware development in the application projects can
proceed effectively. We intend to collaborate with the Globus team and assist in taking forward the
open source implementation of these standards. The ATF and DBTF have written a draft of the eScience Grid Architecture Roadmap and there will be a workshop on April 18th where application
developers and other middleware architects will have the opportunity to critique the proposed
architecture. Without a community effort we cannot ensure that the architecture meets the
requirements of the varied e-Science activities underway.
The standards being adopted and developed within the scientific grid community over recent years
have until recently taken a different path than those developed within the World Wide Web
Consortium and other bodies active in the web services area. This potential divergence of
technologies has caused concern, as there is clearly a need for these two sets of protocols to
interface. In the last six or so months academics and industry have put forward an Open Grid
Services Architecture (OGSA) that essentially provides a merging of the two strands. This grid
services architecture will provide a unifying framework upon which all networked systems can be
integrated, from high-performance computers to the most modest of commercial databases. The eScience community in the UK are actively involved in the specification and development of this
architecture. The Core Programme has funded a joint centre project that will provide database
6
access within this architecture. The proposal is between NeSC, Newcastle and Manchester eScience centres and includes IBM and Oracle as industrial partners.
In addition to the funding of the e-Science Centres, £5M (plus significant industrial contribution) is
available through an ‘Open Call’ with no deadlines. One project has already been funded under the
Open Call with three others under consideration and an anticipated four other proposals are
expected in the near future. The projects for the Open Call must again be addressing a generic
middleware issue – stretching the Grid in one direction or another. The proposals are reviewed by
members of an e-Science ‘college’.
2.5 Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration Grid Projects
The EPSRC in the UK has funded three, six-year, computer science (CS) oriented, Interdisciplinary
Research Collaborations (IRCs). These are major projects that fund key CS research groups from a
number of universities to undertake long-term research in three important areas. The Equator
project, led by Tom Rodden from Nottingham, is concerned with technological innovation in
physical and digital life. The Advanced Knowledge Technologies project (AKT) led by Nigel
Shadbolt from Southampton is concerned with the management of the knowledge life cycle. Lastly,
the DIRC project, led by Cliff Jones from Newcastle and Ian Sommerville from Lancaster, is
concerned with the dependability of computer-based systems. A fourth IRC, jointly funded by
EPSRC and the MRC, is the MIAS project led by Mike Brady from Oxford. This application
focussed IRC is concerned with translating data from medical images and signals into clinical
information of use to the medical profession. The Core Programme has provided further funding to
these IRCs.
Goal
These IRCs were selected after an open competitive bidding process and represent a unique pool of
expertise in these three key software technologies and in the important multidisciplinary application
area of medical informatics. We want to leverage this computer science research activity and extend
it to apply to the Grid. This may have happened naturally but the extra funding will ensure that the
developments will be within the time of the programme and therefore the benefits to the broader
audience will appear that much faster than otherwise.
Deliverables/Outputs
1.
2.
3.
4.
Leverage of outputs of leading edge computer science research into relevant Grid activities.
Grid stretch of these technologies.
‘Grand Challenge’ pilots for e-Health
Creation of IRC e-Science ‘community’
Status
The Core Programme is funding projects with each of these IRCs to enable them to consider the
implications of Grid technology for their research directions. In addition, we are funding two
collaborative projects combining the software technologies of the Equator and AKT IRCs with the
MIAS application project. In effect these projects, each constitute a sort of ‘Grand Challenge’ pilot
project in ‘e-Healthcare’.
Projects have been funded with AKT, Equator and MIAS, and joint projects AKT /MIAS and
Equator/MIAS have also been funded. The DIRC proposal is now with reviewers and will be
discussed at a TAG meeting on May 2nd. The IRC projects were reviewed by TAG with expert
clinicians. All IRC projects are due to start in April.
7
2.6 Support for e-Science Projects
Goal
The e-Science projects in the UK are being developed at the same time as the middleware to support
them. This leads to an inevitable tension and to the fact that application developers are being asked
to use tools that have not been polished and in some cases are still under development. The
application developers need support to use the middleware software. There is also a need to have a
central ‘Certificate Authority’ in the UK to provide secure authority certificates for the use of Grid
resources.
Outputs/Deliverables
1. Interface to middleware developers providing smooth transition between releases for the
UK.
2. Creation of a Grid starter kit (continually updated)
3. Provide information via web relevant to Grid technologies.
4. Act as the UK Certificate Authority.
5. Provide 9-5 telephone/email query service.
6. Educate systems level administrators in use/installation of middleware.
7. Facilitate the Engineering Task Force in implementation of UK e-Science Grid.
Status
In order to provide support for e-Science application projects, a Grid Support Centre (GSC) has
been established, jointly funded by the Core Programme, BBSRC and PPARC (www.gridsupport.ac.uk). The GSC hosts teams located at CCLRC (RAL) and with associates at CCLRC
(Daresbury) and Manchester and Edinburgh Universities. The GSC is charged with supporting the
implementation and operation of the UK e-Science Grid and supporting associated Research
Council Pilots, Centres and Projects. The Centre developed the UK ‘Grid Starter Kit’ which
initially consists of the Globus Toolkit, Condor and the Storage Resource Broker middleware. The
service provides regular upgrades to these core software systems, on-line help and advice for its
installation and commissioning, the management of current Grid security certification system, coordination of the Engineering Task Force (ETF) and the first point of liaison with several key
International groups. The support team are available to answer questions and resolve problems for
Grid application developers across the UK on a 9 to 5 basis.
Further roles of the team are to help educate the systems support staff at the UK e-Science Centres
and to advise the Core Programme Directorate on all matters affecting the efficient and effective
operation of the UK Grid and its connection to International collaborators.
2.7 International Collaboration and Outreach
2.7.1 International Collaboration
Goal
It is important to ensure that the UK e-Science community is actively communicating and
collaborating with the international community. It is therefore desirable to encourage the
development of an informed UK community on Grid technologies and provide funding for them to
play an active role in the development of internationally agreed Grid protocols at the Global Grid
Forum.
8
Deliverables/Outputs
1. Involvement in the Global Grid community and Global Grid Forum (GGF)
2. Collaboration with key international middleware development teams
3. Understanding of other national initiatives and directions
4. Engagement with non UK industrial ventures
Status
The Core Programme has funded a ‘GridNet’ network project which has a substantial travel budget
for attendance of UK experts at relevant standards bodies – the Global Grid Forum, the IETF and
W3C, for example. The last Global Grid Forum in February, saw a significant attendance and
engagement by UK participants.
The UK programme is also concerned to create meaningful links to international efforts represented
by projects such as the EU DataGrid and the US iVDGL projects. We are therefore funding Grid
fellowships for young computer scientists from the UK to participate in these projects. The National
e-Science Centre is also tasked with establishing working agreements with major international
centres such as Argonne National Laboratory, San Diego Supercomputing Center and NCSA in the
USA and is active as a NPACI International partner. We are also looking to establish other
international links and joint programmes
In order to strengthen ties with the US research programme, members of the UK e-Science
community took part in and NSF N+N Meeting in August 2001. A follow up meeting is planned at
NeSC.
Clearly the ties with CERN and the particle physics community in the UK and internationally are
very important. The international links with EU projects are also important for the FP6 programme
which is about to come on line. We also believe that the ESA, NASA connections will continue to
be significant. The UK e-Science community is in a good position to take advantage of anticipated
EU funding for e-Science and Grids.
2.7.2 Demonstrator Projects and Outreach
Goal
There is a need to educate the broader community about e-Science. Even to computational
scientists it is not always clear what the Grid can offer to their science. The idea of the
demonstrators is a short-term project that can use the present technology to illustrate the potential of
the Grid in different areas.
Outputs/Deliverables
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Eleven active demonstrators of Grid technology
Leading scientists who are able to present the demonstrators to their own communities
Literature based on the demonstrators for outreach within industry
‘Bleeding Edge’ tests of the existing Grid middleware
Industrial Grid Outreach – technology transfer
Status
The Core Programme has funded eleven ‘Grid Demonstrator’ projects. We have tried to select
demonstrators across a range of applications representing each of the Research Councils. Examples
include a dynamic brain atlas, a medical imaging project using VR, a robotic telescope project,
automated chemical data capture and climate prediction.
All demonstrators have been reviewed and most are in a final form. They will be used for both
actual demonstrations of the technology at such events as the launch of the National Centre and will
9
be individually documented in a glossy brochure. It is anticipated that we will hold a number of
‘industrial’ days, as part of a DTI Grid outreach programme, later in 2002 at which the
demonstrator projects will also be employed.
On April 25th, Gordon Brown will be opening the National e-Science Centre, where the
demonstrators will play a prominent role.
As part of the community building and communication bridge, the Core Programme is organising
an ‘All Hands’ meeting in which all e-Science projects will be encouraged to participate and the
pilot projects will required to participate. The meeting is scheduled of September 2-4 and will be
held in Sheffield.
2.8 Support for e-Science Network requirements
Goal
The UK e-Science application projects will rely on the UK universities network SuperJANET4 for
delivering the necessary bandwidth. The backbone bandwidth of SuperJANET4 is now 2.5 Gbps
and there is funding in place to upgrade this to 10 Gbps by mid 2002.
Most application developers will not have had to consider network requirements previously and this
can be a complex task. This task is not made easier by the ‘balkanisation’ of the UK network into
an SJ4 backbone run by UKERNA and Metropolitan Area Networks run by university consortia.
The goal, then, is to help the application scientists and the e-Science Centres understand their
network requirements. A longer term goal is to consider what developments are required in order to
ensure the UK network can support Grid applications of the future.
Deliverables/Outputs
1.
2.
3.
4.
Identify bottlenecks and potential bottlenecks.
Analyse e-Science centre and project requirements
Consider QoS issues for the Grid
Long term strategy for network development
Status
The Core Programme has established a Grid Network Team (GNT). The team comprises academics
from different areas of networking and members from UKERNA. The team have scheduled visits
to the e-Science centres and have also visited those pilot projects that are ‘up and running’. A
£500K project with UKERNA and CISCO has been funded to look at traffic engineering issues and
another project is considering the question of bandwidth scheduling with the EU DataGrid project.
Both of these network R&D projects are jointly funded by the Core Programme and PPARC.
3. Committees and Bodies set up within the Core e-Science Programme
3.1 Technical Advisory Group (TAG)
The Technical Advisory Group is made up of UK and international academics and industrial
members, who are able to advise the Director on the directions of the Programme, and who act as
reviewers for the e-Science Centres and their projects.
3.2 Grid Network Team (GNT)
As noted above the GNT, chaired by Professor David Huchinson, was established to advise the
directorate and its Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on matters related to computer networking.
There is a short-term role which is to assist e-Science application developers and e-Science Centres
understand network requirements and identify network bottlenecks. A longer-term role is to identify
10
the directions that the UK needs to take to ensure that the network is as required by the growing eScience demand.
3.3 Architecture Task Force (ATF)
As noted above the Architectural Task Force , led by Professor Malcolm Atkinson, was established
to develop an architectural model for the UK's contributions to grid middleware.
3.4 Database Task Force (DBTF)
The Grid DataBase Task Force (DBTF), led by Dr Norman Paton from Manchester, has been set up
to examine the question of Grid middleware interfaces to Relational DataBase Management
Systems and the federation of different data sources.
3.5 Engineering Task Force (ETF)
The Grid Engineering Task Force was formed to guide the construction, testing and demonstration
of a prototype UK e-Science Grid. It contains members from each of the ten UK e-Science Centres.
The Task Force operates through several Working Groups.
3.6 Security Task Force (STF)
The Security Task Force has been formed to help understand and prioritise the security issues of the
Grid. The focus of the team is to provide the Director with suggested ways forward to tackle these
issues.
4. Meetings Attended
During the first twelve months of the programme it has been essential that the team meet with key
industrial and academic players and with other funding agencies both in the UK and internationally.
The meetings are of a variety of types, making ties with industry, international meetings, meeting
with other funding agencies etc. The team members have attended over 200 meetings to this end
(this number includes conferences and brief meetings). A detailed list of meetings attended is
available in the detailed version of this report.
5. Programme and Project Management
This is a complex programme with many inter-related projects and bodies. Figure 5 below
illustrates this complexity by highlighting the connections between one pilot project and other
elements of the programme. This same complexity exists when considering any one body or project
and its relationship to the whole community. Many of these elements are beyond the ‘control’ of the
Core Programme and at most we can try to ensure communication and awareness.
In order to manage the Core Programme we are using a number of tools, including Microsoft
Project. The Project has been defined at quite a detailed level (see figures below). This provides a
picture of the programme at any one given point in time. To provide a higher-level view of the
programme we have created an Action Plan (in Excel) – provided in Appendix 2. This provides the
key events and has proved useful in determining likely budget requirements and effort.
Management of the key elements of the programme is completed in slightly differing ways due to
the nature of the elements.
5.1 Centre Management
The e-Science Centres are required to provide a quarterly report/plan in which they indicate possible
projects that are being developed, hence communicating that to other centres. There is a secure area
on the NeSC website where papers and reports regarding the Centres are shared.
11
The Centre projects are reviewed by members of the TAG, and occasionally by other outside
experts. The centre management teams manage the portfolio of projects but they are also coordinated through a project database web page on the NeSC site (see below). The Directorate also
take an active role in several of the Centre management committees.
Centre director meetings are held every 6-8 weeks where issues and opportunities can be discussed.
Each centre has a six monthly review, beginning six months after the first industrial project is
awarded. The review includes presentations from each of the active industrial projects and where
the core team will review the financial and other details. The first of these reviews will be held in
May at the Cambridge Centre. The reviews include members of the Core Programme team together
with members of the TAG and e-Science Steering Committee.
5.2 Project Co-ordination
A project mapping scheme has been developed. All projects are mapped on to the table of
middleware components. The mapping identifies those components of Grid development that are
included in any given project.
This project mapping has been implemented as a web page. All e-Science projects are being stored
in the database, indicating those components of middleware that they are actively engaged in
developing, the funding agency and links to other projects. There is a visual representation of the
database on the web page which indicates those areas that have well developed code, research code
or none. A beta implementation of this mapping is available on the NeSC website.
We intend including international as well as UK projects in the database which should provide a
good overview for the community as a whole. The intention is that as middleware developers are
considering proposals they will look at the web page and identify those areas where there is little or
no activity.
The All Hands meeting in September should ensure that there is cross communication of project
plans and progress.
5.3 Demonstrator Management
The management phase of the demonstrators is almost complete although there will be a need to
ensure that they are maintained and are usable throughout the programme. Each demonstrator was
reviewed during development by one or more of the Core Programme Team to ensure that the
directions taken were as planned and matched the programme goals.
The Grid Outreach programme using the demonstrators is being managed by the DTI but is also in
collaboration with the EPSRC marketing group to ensure a same ‘branding’ of material.
5.4 Grid Support Centre
The Grid Support Centre is reviewed quarterly. The Centre manager, Dr David Boyd, provides a
status report and statistics of the number of requests for assistance that have been received, the
number of hits and downloads of software from the website and so on. He also provides a set of
milestones for the Centre for the upcoming quarter. The resources and effort are considered at each
stage to ensure that the level of support is maintained. Both the GSC and ETF produce milestones
and updates for the Directorate and the rest of the community as an integral part of the activity. The
centre had its first such review on February 20th and the next is scheduled in May.
5.5 Open Call and IRCs
Each of the open call and IRC projects will be reviewed together in a six monthly meeting which
will be held along the same lines as the centre reviews. The first review meeting for these projects
will take place in September. There will be a steering committee comprising the IRC directors and
Core Programme directorate to monitor progress of the projects.
12
5.6 Risk Managment
The Core Programme keeps an active document of risks and actions taken, or to be taken, to
minimize the risk. This document is maintained regularly as the programme evolves and areas of
risk develop. The programme regular report to the EPSRC RAC.
6. Finances
As noted above the Core Programme is funded by the DTI and the Research Councils, with EPSRC
managing the programme on behalf of the research councils. There are some of the elements of the
programme that are funded jointly and others that are only funded from one source or the other.
In the first year EPSRC has committed £9,052,350 and DTI £9,403,000. This is in line with the
expected level of commitment for the first year of the programme.
7. Conclusions
The Programme has seen a busy and productive year. All key activities have progressed as planned.
The only area to have caused concern and moved at a slower rate than planned was the AccessGrid.
This was due in part to a mismatch in multicast protocols across the network.
The e-Science Centres are all up and running. The demonstrator projects are mostly complete. The
Centre projects are beginning to take shape. The proposals for the Open call are just beginning to
appear, perhaps slightly behind where we might expect them to be, however this is likely to be due
to the effort being spent in bringing in Centre projects.
The programme is quite complex and needs careful management to ensure success. The team are
using a variety of management tools and are involved in regular reviews and meeting of the relevant
parties. The project mapping promises to provide a good tool for project co-ordination and project
information dissemination.
The Programme is an internationally recognised programme and has been described as the leading
‘Grid’ programme in Europe. By leveraging international efforts, particularly from the US, the
activity has been able to sprint off the starting blocks.
The next twelve months sees a great deal of cross project communication activity, the building of
the first draft of the architecture from the architecture roadmap, the Grid outreach programme to
industry and the continuing development of industrial projects through the centres.
13