Speaker
Overview
Over the last 15 years, science and research have become increasingly based on cross-border collaboration between researchers across the world. Sharing experiences, resources and facilities is, in many situations, the only way to ensure sustainability. In addition, science, research and education are making intensive use of high-capacity computing to model complex systems, to process and analyse experimental results, and to deliver them in real time in different locations around the globe. Computing grids for e-Science and Research and Education (R&E) Networks have emerged to respond to the requirements of the most demanding scientific disciplines to share and combine the power of distributed computation and the reliability of dedicated networks. The work presented aims at describing this synergy, discussing how advanced R&E networking provides the reliable connectivity which is enabling a scalable, sustainable distributed grid computing infrastructure in Europe and across the world.
Conclusions
Computing grids and Research & Education (R&E) Networks are increasingly growing to respond to the evolving requirements of demanding scientific and education disciplines. Their synergy is achieved by combining the power of geographically distributed computation and the reliability of advance networks dedicated to the research community.
The work presented aims at describing both the immediate and far-reaching effects of the interaction, discussing how advanced R&E networking provides the reliable connectivity which enables a scalable, sustainable distributed grid computing infrastructure in Europe and other parts of the world.Finally, the submitted presentation will describe the role of the GÉANT Project’s dedicated task to Liaison and Support. This task is devoted to providing assistance and support to projects, initiatives and organisations such as EGI in order to facilitate and encourage productive use of the network. Some examples of support given to grid projects will be provided
Impact
The presentation is mainly addressed at EGI/NGIs’ grid computing developers, users and at site administrators, network administrators and PERT (Performance Enhancement Response Team) engineers.
Dealing with how the network layer is integrated with the distributed computing facility, the work submitted aims at considering the network as a stable, solid, yet dynamic and customisable resource to support grid-enabled research communities.
Finally, it will be highlighted how network-related activities such as monitoring and performance measurements can improve the perception of the grid computing resource from the perspective of the end users (researchers and scientists). Checking the status of crucial links between distributed computing and storage resources and regularly assessing the transmission cost of big data files across the network can effectively improve the overall computing operations within the EGI community.
Description of the work
Distributed computing over large geographical areas and dedicated Research and Education (R&E) Networks have emerged to respond to the requirements of the most demanding scientific disciplines by combining the power of distributed computation and the reliability of dedicated networks.
GÉANT is the pan-European data network dedicated to the research and education community. Together with Europe's National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), GÉANT connects 40 million users at over 8,000 institutions across 40 countries. The resulting network provides an ideal infrastructure for any scientific and research application with demanding network needs in terms of sustained bandwidth, low latency (or one-way delay) and low jitter (latency or one-way delay variation). Grid computing is probably one of the most interesting and complex of these applications. The reliability of such a distributed computing facility is in fact, directly related to the reliability of the connections among computing elements, storage elements, resource brokers and grid user interfaces. The footprint of the GÉANT and the NREN networks, their coverage across Europe and the international links to networks in North America, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, the Southern Caucasus, Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region all enable a seamless, reliable, competitive infrastructure for the highly distributed grid computation EGI/NGIs aims to provide.
Finally, the GÉANT Project (GN3) has a task dedicated to Liaison and Support which focuses on providing assistance and support to projects, initiatives and organisations such as EGI, to facilitate and encourage a productive use of Research and Education Networks.
The presentation proposed will describe the importance of the crucial relationship between the network and the computing/application layers and how the GÉANT project is working in collaboration with EGI to constantly improve the research experience of scientists.
