NeSC Services
Dr Richard Sinnott
National e-Science Centre
University of Glasgow
Scotland
ros@dcs.gla.ac.uk
1
Overview
Grid Support Centre
Engineering Task Force
NeSC Forge
Local Outreach and Consolidation
NeSC Community/Consensus Building Events
Conclusions and Future
2
Grid Support Centre
Involves
OGSA-DAI support
X
X
Stephen Booth, Neil Chue Hong and Jeremy Nowell
Deal with
– Queries
– Website
– Installations
– Testing
– Management and Reporting
Local Registration Authorities
X
X
Dave Berry, Mark Cavanagh, Dave McNicol, Jeremy Nowell RAs in Edinburgh
Alan Flavell, Derek Higgins, John Watt RAs in Glasgow
3
Engineering Task Force
Involves
Actively participating in establishment of UK e-Science Grid
X
John Watt (1.0 FTE), Richard Sinnott, David McNicol (0.5 FTE), Stuart Paterson
(summer student), Dave Berry
– In May 2003 NeSC became first UK e-Science Centre to run integration tests
across every site of the UK (Level 2) Grid.
» Therefore 100% access to UK Grid resources at this time
– Demonstrated bioinformatics BLAST jobs across L2G
» Demonstrated at last review via Access Grid
X
Resources currently available on L2G
– Neptune (Glasgow)
» Plan to add ScotGrid (more later)
– Gilmour, Lomond (Edinburgh),
» Plan to add Blue Dwarf
4
Engineering Task Force …ctd
Future NeSC involvement in ETF work focused on
X
X
On-going development of L3G
– Currently installing software such as MPICH, VOM for this
Addressing issues identified in Production Quality e-Science Grid (from
Hardisty/Giddy)
– Common virtual organisation software
– Security aspects
» Person responsible for security identified
» Initial draft of security risk assessment completed
5
NeSC Forge
NeSC Forge used for collaborative
development
Provides full development system with
Versioning (via CVS)
Project web site
Tools for communication between
development teams
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Discussion Forums
Bug tracking
Support requests, patch submissions, and
enhancement requests
Communication between project members using
mailing lists
Sharing of documentation
Handling of to-do lists, tasks, etc
File uploads/releases
Posting of news
Code Snippets
Real-time messaging (through Jabber support)
Currently used by several projects
QCDgrid, ILDG, …
6
Local Outreach
NeSC Glasgow - E-Science Hub
Officially opened 17th September
X
Focal point for e-Science research/activities at Glasgow
Major investment by university
X
X
Funding Technical Director
230m2 of newly renovated floor space in Kelvin Building
– offices
– access grid facility
– training room
» equipped with 20PCs/server for training courses
7
Local Outreach …ctd
E-Science Hub …ctd
X
Work closely with foundation departments
– Department of Computing Science
» JISC bio-text mining centre bid (on-going)
– Department of Physics & Astronomy
» Consolidation of resources (more later)
X
Also working closely with other groups including
– Bioinformatics Research Centre
» SHEFC SBRN bid, BBSRC Metabolic pathways bid, …
– Electronics and Electrical Engineering
» EPSRC Pilot project NanoCMOSGrid
– Biostatistics
» MRC e-Clinical Trials bid
– Computer/Information Services
» Campus wide infrastructure enhancements for e-Science
» Security issues
» JISC data cluster bid
8
Consolidation
Consolidating resources at e-Science Hub
Building around ScotGrid
X
Providing shared Grid resource for scientists inside/outside Glasgow
– Particle physicists, computer scientists, bioinformaticians, …
» Whoever is interested, wants to get involved in e-Science!
– Exploits highly specialised systems admins
– Try to avoid all depts downloading same software
» Focal point, knowledge pool, primary resource for e-Science
activity at Glasgow
Existing Hardware
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
59 IBM X Series 330 dual 1 GHz Pentium III with 2GB memory
2 IBM X Series 340 dual 1 GHz Pentium III with 2GB memory and dual ethernet
3 IBM X Series 340 dual 1 GHz Pentium III with 2GB memory and 100 + 1000 Mbit/s ethernet
1TB disk
LTO/Ultrium Tape Library
Cisco ethernet switches
New…
–
–
–
–
–
–
IBM X Series 370 PIII Xeon with 32 x 512 MB RAM
5TB FastT500 disk 70 x 73.4 GB IBM FC Hot-Swap HDD
eDIKT 28 IBM blades dual 2.4 GHz Xeon with 1.5GB memory
eDIKT 6 IBM X Series 335 dual 2.4 GHz Xeon with 1.5GB memory
CDF 10 Dell PowerEdge 2650 2.4 GHz Xeon with 1.5GB memory
CDF 7.5TB Raid disk
Shared Resources
Disk: ~15TB
CPU: ~ 330 1GHz
9
Consolidation …ctd
No Grid software on ScotGrid
front end servers running Grid software
X
Jobs submitted via qsub commands
backend runs Red Hat 7.3
X
…easily changed with xcat tools
Target share usage policy in place
Single local scheduler (based on Maui, OpenPBS)
X
easily modified as new resources added
Current target share policy is
X
X
X
60% HEP (LHC, BaBar, ATLAS, CDF, …)
20% CPU time Bioinformatics
20% open share – to encourage others
– Add to resource get higher % CPU time
Looking at offering ScotGrid as UK e-Science resource
Investigate issues in harmonising PP, UK e-Science Grids
10
NeSC Community/Consensus Building Events
Organise workshops on key e-Science issues
Should lead to clarity and consensus on Grid software/practice
X
Security…
– What should sites be aware of?
» Risk assessment? Security of software, resources?
– What are the do’s/don’t?
» Where are private keys kept? How are rooms, kit secured? What services are
offered on key Grid machines? How are firewalls configured?
– What is best software for authorisation?
» Are people being trained on how to use the software?
X
X
X
X
X
– What should sys admins, Grid developers, firewall administrators, Grid
educators, e-Science centres be doing, developing, teaching etc?
– …etc
Workflows…
Scheduling…
Portals…
Information Services…
…Other Services…
11
Conclusions
Will continue very active involvement in
GSC
ETF L2G and move towards L3G/Production Grid
X
(or whatever form these take in the future)
Will lead drive towards OGSA Grid and related standards
through
key software development activities (OGSA-DAI, DAIT, eDIKT…)
leadership in strategic GGF activities
Will continue outreach activities at local, regional,
national and international level building on consolidated
computational infrastructures for e-Science
12
Questions?
13