Study of User Priorities for
e-Infrastructure for e-Research
(SUPER)
Steven Newhouse
Jennifer Schopf
Andrew Richards
Malcolm Atkinson
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We have a dream…
• A usable, useful, and accessible
e-infrastructure for researchers across a wide
variety of disciplines
• Existing and new e-infrastructure facilities
and services integrated into a coherent whole
• To increase the use of the existing
einfrastructures by a >10 by 2010
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Turning Dreams to Reality!
• Identify issues that are:
– Short-term (6-18 months):
• Actions within existing funding streams
– Longer-term (3-5 years):
• Actions that need new/renwed funding streams
• Inform roadmaps for collaborative research:
– Organisations: OMII-UK, NGS, DCC, …
– Funders: RC UK, JISC, JCSR, …
• Not the place to identify solutions
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Methodology & Coverage
• Face to face interviews:
– Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford,
Cambridge, UCL, Reading & on-line survey
• Covered 45 people from over 30 projects
– ~30% EPSRC
– ~30% BBSRC, MRC and JISC
– Remainder: DTI, EU, Wellcome, AHRC,
ESRC, NERC & PPARC, University funded
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Projects by Funders
EPSRC
BBSRC
Campus
DTI
JISC
MRC
SFC
MRC
PPARC
Wellcome
EU
ESRC
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Major Common Topics
• Distributed file management and policy
• Tools to support dynamic Virtual Organisations
• Long-term project support:
– Tools, services, training and consultancy
• Provision of authentication, software licensing,
and reliable consistent environments
• User Interaction with e-infrastructure services
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File management and policy
• Growth of simulation based science on grid
resources
• Files needed as input & output (not DBs)
– From your desktop and remote resources
• Files need meta-data as to content & source
– Ideally automatic annotation & provenance
• How long must/should they be stored for?
• Who can have access and when?
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Dynamic Virtual Organisations
• Current VO models are relatively static and
driven from the centre, e.g. VOMS
• Need to be more end-user centric
– The resources and services I can access:
• Through collaboration, membership, position, …
• VO composition & relationships change
– Tools and operating models need to reflect this
– May need to record activity within a VO
• e.g. contracts, deliverables,
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Projects need Support
• Teams: ‘people the most valuable asset’
– But managing distributed teams as one is very hard
– Manage different cultures, organisations & incentives
• Services: ‘stand on shoulders’
– Software: Use what’s out there:
• NGS: Core very low-level infrastructures
• Community Resources: MIMAS, EDINA, myGrid, …
– People: Need access to experts
• Training & Consultancy: ‘rapidly gain knowledge’
– Hard to get all the skills in one person  MUST TRAIN
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User Oriented Operational Issues
• Authentication
– Certificates adopted by service providers
– Very difficult for many end-user communities
• Deployment of many wrappers around certificates
• Licensing
– Growing use of third party commercial applications, e.g. Matlab
– Use my license on remote machine
• Currently very hard (impossible)
• Consistent Environments
– Without consistency very hard to deploy licensed applications on
demand
• Reliability
– If services not reliable, might as well not be there. Better if not!
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User Interaction with
e-infrastructure Services
• Interactions MUST match the user
– Technical Expertise
– Normal Environment
• Command line shells
– Traditional ‘expert’ interface to systems
• Scripting Environment
– From within basic shells: Bash, Tcsh, …
– Application Environments: Perl, Matlab, Python, …
• Workflows
All underpinned through a common API
• Portals
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Minor Issues
• Sustainability
– FEC is making collaboration harder
– Need to ensure usage is accounted for
• File Replication
• End to End Security
– Firewalls still the ‘blunt instrument’ of choice
• Scheduling
– A vital requirement for only a few groups
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Conclusions
• Software
– Much has been prototyped… but not finished
– There are still areas that need experimentation
• Policy
– Need ‘better joined up’ ness through best practice
– Data, VOs, Environments, …
• Community Support
– Technical consultancy for all users of e-infrastructure
services from people
– Self-help training materials and hands-on tutorials
delivered by trainers for common tools
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Acknowledgements
• Funding
– E-Science Core Programme & JISC
• Day release
– OMII-UK, NGS, JISC, Globus Alliance
• Contributors
– Interviewees for their honesty & flexibility
– Comments from the community
• Feedback: s.newhouse@omii.ac.uk
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Technical Breakouts
• Virtual Organisation Infrastructures
– Life Cycle
– Entities that need to be managed & accounted for
• E-Infrastructure Support Service
– Training
– Consultancy
• E-Infrastructure Deployment
– Consistent environments
– User Interaction
• File & meta-data Management
– Mechanisms
– Policy
– Replication
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Breakout Considerations
• Who are the early adopter/active
communities?
– To gather detailed requirements
• How uniform are the requirements within
the community?
– Are there gaps? Revise emphasis?
• Targets over the next 12 months
– Longer term?
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