Infrastructure support and
Service expectations:
Commoditising the Grid
Dr Oz Parchment
Team Leader
Computational Services
What is e-Science?
"e-Science is about global collaboration in key
areas of science, and the next generation of
infrastructure that will enable it."
John Taylor, Director General of the Research
Councils, OST
Role of Central IT Services
• “provides a range of College-wide C&IT infrastructural
facilities including….”
• “To provide the IT infrastructure and services
framework….”
• “the management and development of the University’s
information technology infrastructure…”
• “providing the infrastructure and support ….”
Role Central IT Services
• We now have a much wider context but the
responsibilities remain and activity increases.
UK HE
&
University of
of Southampton
Southampton
International University
HE
Industry
IS Strategy
aimed at local IS Strategy to
community cover enlarged
community
Where do you fit into the picture?
• Centres who host Grid
Services
• Grid Services hosted by
academic departments.
• Only client users at your site
Infrastructure Support for e-Science
• Personnel
• Physical
¾ Networks
¾ Computational resources
• Software
¾ Middleware
• Procedural
Infrastructure Support
• Personnel
¾ Grid aware focal point
¾ Bridging IT services and e-Science
¾ Providing input to Infrastructure decisions
¾ Tracking Grid developments
Infrastructure Support
• Network Bandwidth & Performance
¾ Internally & Externally
¾ Protocols (Multicast)
• Network QoS
¾ Real time data capture
¾ AccessGrid
• Security/Firewalls
• Web Caches
¾ Web Service thru port 80
Bottleneck
Upgraded to 1Gbps
Installed dual redundant firewalls,
throughput capacity ~700Mbps
LeNSE
Originally single
(2.4Gbps)
firewall throughput
155Mbps
1Gbps
~60Mbps
1 Gbps
100 Mbps
2 Mbps
R1
10 Mbps
R2
1 Gbps
Firewalls
(will ‘throttle’ traffic)
1 Gbps
R3
1 Gbps
e-Science Centre
2 Mbps
e-Science Grid Network Monitoring
• Nationwide Coverage
• Useful Information
¾ Throughput
¾ Connectivity
¾ Packet Loss
Software Infrastructure
• Choice of middleware – currently GT 2.2
¾ OSGI/GT3
• Keep in step with other service providers
¾ Major changes synchronised across service providers?
• Site/Academic Licensed software
¾ Acceptable Use policies
¾ Legal Requirements
Program may only be
used
•by Institution’s
employees or students
•at a designated facility
•internal use only
•directly supervised,
•commercial use
prohibited
Procedural Infrastructure
Global Collaborations
software
computers
sensor
nets
instruments
colleagues
•
User Authentication
•
User Authorisation
•
User Support
data archives
Procedural Infrastructure
User Authentication
User Authorisation
•
•
Managing Access
¾ Many Terms & Conditions
¾ Issues of scalability
¾ Seamless Access!!!!
•
Resource sharing with 3rd parties
Certificate Authority (CA)
¾ X.509 digital certificates.
¾ e-Science CA at GSC
ƒ Procedures documented in CPS
v0.9
•
Registration Authority (RA)
¾ Courses run by GSC for
interested parties.
¾ Issues of trust.
¾ Issues of scalability
¾ What portion are you prepared to
share?
¾ How do you enforce this?
¾ How do you account it?
¾ Licensing Issues
Procedural Infrastructure
•Southampton Regional
User Support
•GSC UK Grid Support Centre :
e-Science Centre:
University of Southampton
www.e-science.soton.ac.uk
•Regional e-Science Centre
•ISS support:
•Infrastructure Group (ISS)
www.iss.soton.ac.uk/research
www.grid-support.ac.uk
•National e-Science Centre:
www.nesc.ac.uk/layers.html
National e-Science
Centres
Self-help groups – some examples
•Globus project (maillist)
www.globus.org
•Global Grid Forum
www.gridforum.org
Service Expectations
• Who is the customer?
¾ Local Community
¾ SLA/SD structures already in
place.
¾ Enlarged Community
¾ Treat as local community?
¾ Treat as special community?
¾ Scalability?
• Information dissemination
¾ Who needs to know & What ?
• Balance between ‘traditional
provision’ and new initiatives
(contention management)
• Managing expectation
¾ Hardware availability
¾ Software availability
¾ Data Storage
¾ Backup policies
¾ Help desk priorities
Commoditising the Grid
•
•
•
•
•
Physical infrastructure in place
Software infrastructure in place
Widely deployable
Personnel (Widely understood)
Procedural infrastructure in place
Information Systems Services and e-Science