Grid Initiatives for e-Science virtual communities in
Europe and Latin America
THE GISELA PROJECT
(Overview & VRC Support)
Bernard M. Marechal
CETA-CIEMAT (Spain)
EGI Technical Forum, 14th - 17th September 2010
Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
www.gisela-grid.eu
GISELA references
FP7 INFRA-2010-2 call - Topic INFRA-2010-1.2.3: Virtual Research Communities
Start date: 01/09/2010 - Duration: 24 months
Project type: CP-CSA
Grant agreement No: 261487
Project Coordinator: Bernard M. Marechal
CETA-CIEMAT (Spain) & UFRJ (Brazil)
email: marechal at if.ufrj.br
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA Countries & Partners
15 Countries (11 in Latin America)
19 Partners (14 in Latin America)
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA Objectives and Goals
Ensure the long- term sustainability of the eInfrastructure in the Latin American continent
Provide full support to the Virtual Research
Communities spanning Latin America and
Europe, using the e-Infrastructure.
Focus on two inter-related goals:
• Implement a sustainability model rooted on National Grid Initiatives (NGI), in
association with CLARA, NRENs and collaborating with EGI.
• Provide the communities with the suited e-Infrastructure and Application-related
Services required to improve the effectiveness of their research. This will address
both:
 The current EELA-2 User Communities whose research investigations are
carried out at the Institution level or in small collaborations.
 The larger Virtual Research Communities as Life & Earth Sciences, HEP
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA Work plan
•
GISELA shall provide and support basic (CORE) operation services. It will
develop inter-operation agreement with GÉANT2, CLARA, the NRENs and the
NGIs, in Europe and Latin America;
•
GISELA shall work out, with the CLARA Transition Team, the model of
sustainability for the e-Infrastructure best adapted to the CLARA and LA
NRENs environment;
•
CLARA shall identify the NREN(s) that will be in charge of the Operation and
Support of the e-Infrastructure, applying the business plan.
•
GISELA basic duties:
– Ensure the proper access of GISELA users to the e-Infrastructure resources;
– Support Application developers and users over the whole process from deploying
an Application up to running it in production;
– Organise the training best adapted to each VRC;
– Support the use of the e-Infrastructure and Application-related Services already
developed in EELA-2 and helps the users in the validation of these services in the
context of their Application;
– Participate in the development of new services requested by the VRCs and helps in
the test and validation of these services for user’s Applications.
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA Management Structure
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA VRCs Support 1/4
• Before GISELA, one of the major EELA-2 concerns was to interact with
/ get support from User Communities
– Instruments: Conferences, Workshops, Tutorials, User Forum, Grid
schools, “Gridification” weeks, etc.
– In 2009, EELA-2 (www.eu-eela.eu) collaborated to the realisation of the
e-Infrastructure Survey of the eResearch 2020 Project
(www.eResearch2020.eu). Its purpose was to “investigate the utilisation
of e-Infrastructures in Virtual Research Communities and to propose
strategies to policy makers and the e-Infrastructure community to
enhance the uptake and use of these technologies”.
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA VRCs Support 2/4
– eResearch 2020 Final Report (February 2010): “The Role of eInfrastructures in the Creation of Global Virtual Research Communities”.
Key questions addressed in the study included:
 To what extent do e-Infrastructures contribute to the establishment of global VRCs? Do they
reduce disadvantages of researchers in peripheral regions and developing countries?
 What are the organisational structures and coordination mechanisms of e-Infrastructures, their key
players in the interaction with the researcher communities, the relevant regulatory and policy
aspects and the support they receive by funding and other external bodies?
 How well do e-Infrastructure providers define, consult, plan for, engage with and overcome
bottlenecks in scaling up to match growth in their user community?
 How do e-Infrastructures ensure that they make an essential contribution to their community of
beneficiaries?
 How do researchers use e-Infrastructures? What are the main benefits and costs for global VRCs
and to what extent do they influence adoption and use?
 Given current trends, what e-Infrastructure and VRCs can we expect in the future?
 What policy action can enhance the impact of e-Infrastructures on VRCs and how can a Roadmap
for European e-Infrastructures be devised?
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA VRCs Support 3/4
• VRC situation in EELA-2:
– EELA-2 ended up supporting 61 Applications from 78 Institutions
– EELA-2 User Communities were typically 1-2 Institution group(s), largely
located in Latin America, alone or collaborating with a few Institutions. Their
use of the Infrastructure was to learn Grid technology to evaluate its
potential for their future research.
– As a result, not enough large productions were executed and the use of the
e-Infrastructure was lower than it could have been.
www.gisela-grid.eu
EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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GISELA VRCs Support 4/4
• GISELA and VRCs Support
– VRC support is one of GISELA main objectives. Some concerns:
 How to contact (large) VRCs?
 How to let VRCs know of non-European Regional e-Infrastructures as
GISELA?
 How to coordinate actions of common interest (Training, Service
development,..) between Regional e-Infrastructures?
 More generally, how to coordinate VRC support in collaboration with EGI?
– As a matter of fact, we have already suggested the EGI related projects
to also raise these issues at the "Regional Initiatives" session of this EGI
Technical Forum.
– We propose to organise a Workshop: "Regional e-Infrastructures meet
VRCs" in the forthcoming 4-5 months after the EGI Forum, to progress
on VRC support
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EGI Technical Forum - 14 - 17 September 2010 - Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
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