The EGI Conference 2017 was the EGI Community's main event of 2017 and the last meeting organised in the context of the EGI-Engage project. The programme focused on the technical roadmap of EGI, with days dedicated to authorisation and authentication, compute services both HTC and cloud, as well as storage and data services and uptake of the services in scientific communities. Sessions on e-infrastructure governance, procurement and business models were also included in the programme.
The INDIGO Summit 2017 was the flagship event of the INDIGO-DataCloud project, with a focus on user engagement and the INDIGO service catalogue. This event was centered on exploring the solutions provided by the INDIGO software, applying them to concrete use cases brought forward by scientific communities and resource providers. Demos, training and hands-on implementation sessions will also be included in the programme.
The events were hosted by INFN-Catania, part of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and had the support of the Metropolitan City of Catania.
Acknowledgements
The EGI Conference 2017 was supported by the project EGI-Engage, funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654142.
The INDIGO Summit 2017 was supported by the project INDIGO-DataCloud, funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 653549.
EGI Conference 2017 will host the V meeting of the EGI-Engage Collaboration Board (CB). The meeting agenda is available for CB members at:
https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3277/
The EGI Conference 2017 opening plenary will present EGI services and roadmap in the context of the European Cloud Initiative and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) of the EC. EOSC is expected to enable Europe to maintain its current global competitive advantage in excellence science.
Besides presenting the EGI contribution to the initiative, the Opening Plenary will bring the researcher's perspective on the EOSC by hosting a presentation by Ian Corbel on the pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes project (PCAWG). The project is analysing large cohorts of cancer genomes, and pursuing so-called pan-cancer studies to identify factors that may be involved in tumour formation and disease progression across multiple cancer types. PCAWG is currently analyzing >2800 cancer whole genomes, largely on academic and public clouds, and is also developing approaches for data integration with transcriptome & clinical data to address specific hypotheses. PCAWG is one of the EOSCpilot science demonstrators.
The EGI Conference 2017 opening plenary will be chaired by Prof. Antonio Insolia, Director of the INFN Division of Catania.
The harmonization of Authentication and authorization is a core feature for a successful resource federation. The new EGI AAI service, CheckIn, has been designed to answer to the evolving requirements of the user communities, and to be interoperable with the pan-European identity federations and research infrastructures. The CheckIn architecture is aligned with the best practices identified by the AARC project. The session will focus on the new developments of the checkin service, the use cases already integrated with it and how new use cases can leverage on the EGI AAI services to enable federated authentication.
Competence Centres (CC) in EGI bring together scientific institutes, software developer teams and e-infrastructure providers into small, focused collaborations to design, develop, validate and promote community-specific e-Infrastructure services towards Research Infrastructure communities. This double session is organised 2 years after the EGI-Engage project started supporting CCs. During the sessions 8 CCs and 2 new communities working in 'CC-style' will present the community-specific challenges they tackled with the use of EGI services, the outcome and lessons learnt from this work, and the impact this made on the concerned Research Infrastructures. Further information about Competence Centres: https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/EGI-Engage:Competence_centres
This session will focus on the state of play of the EOSC pilot work and EC policy development concerning possible technical and organisational architecture of the EOSC.
Discussion will also touch upon suitable governance frameworks and funding instruments allowing an effective set up of the EOSC and sustainable operations on the basis of different scenarios for its architecture.
Draft Agenda:
14:30 - 14:50 EOSC from vision to implementation: updates fromt the EC (Carmela ASERO)
14:50 - 15:05 EOSC service architecture: state of play and next steps from EOSC pilot project (Donatella CASTELLI)
15:05 - 15:50 Panel discussion
15:50 - 16:00 Conclusions
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
The harmonization of Authentication and authorization is a core feature for a successful resource federation. The new EGI AAI service, CheckIn, has been designed to answer to the evolving requirements of the user communities, and to be interoperable with the pan-European identity federations and research infrastructures. The CheckIn architecture is aligned with the best practices identified by the AARC project. The session will focus on the new developments of the checkin service, the use cases already integrated with it and how new use cases can leverage on the EGI AAI services to enable federated authentication.
Competence Centres (CC) in EGI bring together scientific institutes, software developer teams and e-infrastructure providers into small, focused collaborations to design, develop, validate and promote community-specific e-Infrastructure services towards Research Infrastructure communities. This double session is organised 2 years after the EGI-Engage project started supporting CCs. During the sessions 8 CCs and 2 new communities working in 'CC-style' will present the community-specific challenges they tackled with the use of EGI services, the outcome and lessons learnt from this work, and the impact this made on the concerned Research Infrastructures. Further information about Competence Centres: https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/EGI-Engage:Competence_centres
This session brings together representatives from multiple e-Infrastructures. The theme of the session will be PanCancer and the present and future requirements of this ambitious and challenging project. The session will additionally cover updates from all e-Infrastructures present and discuss strategies to improve interoperability and collaboration to support cross e-infrastructure use cases such as PanCancer and other communities.
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
E-infrastructures provides high quality federation services & tools that enable and make effective the distributed service management. All these tools together assemble the e-Infrastructure Commons, one of the main pillars of the Open Science Commons, an ecosystem of services that constitute the foundation layer of any distributed e-Infrastructures. The technical development of the e-Infrastructure Commons services within EGI-Engage has been user-driven and the technical roadmap have taken into account several requirements collected from the competence centres of the project, which represent some of the main Research Infrastructures in Europe.
This session will present recent enhancements on the e-Infrastructure Commons, with a special focus on the service registry, information system, accounting, monitoring and messaging.
This session provides an overview of EGI technical roadmap aiming at advancing the capabilities of the EGI service catalogue in the area of AAI, data management and cloud. The EGI technical roadmap is driven by the Technology Coordination Boards with the contribution of user communities, technology providers and service providers.
This session is primarily intended for consumers, providers and software providers and is intended to expose the EGI technical roadmaps and to collect feedback from the audience.
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
The European E-Infrastructure Services Gateway (eInfraCentral project) started in January 2017 to simplify the accessibility and increase the uptake of European services for research from both the public and private sectors. This goal will be achieved by developing a common service catalogue and one-stop shop portal. The project has the backing and involvement of the five main European e-infrastructures (EGI, GEANT, PRACE, EUDAT and OpenAIRE) and has the mission to engage with the broad community of e-infrastructure projects and service providers. The project is running a consultation with the stakeholders to collect requirements and understand how to better provide value to service providers and service consumers. The goal of this workshop is to communicate the opportunities arising from the project and stimulate requirements to ensure that the future portal and service catalogue will create the best value for the European research sector.
Expected output:
- Identify and collect requirements from the different stakeholders (e.g. consumers of services, providers who want to publish/promote their services)
- Disseminate the online questionnaire about requirements and solicit feedback
- Creating awareness of future possibilities to publish and promote your services into the eInfraCentral portal
Project website: http://einfracentral.eu
This session will present the latest development on the EGI Federated Cloud area. After an introduction to the status and general improvements, there will be dedicated presentations of the most relevant achievements.
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
Full title: Authentication, data access and computing interoperability of IVOA based cloud services integrated in EGI FedCloud.
The EGI-Engage H2020 European Project partially founded a joint project with the Canadian Advanced Network for Astronomical Research (CANFAR) to explore the authentication, data access and computing interoperability of cloud services based on tools and standards developed by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance.
IVOA is an organisation that debates and agrees the technical standards needed to realize the Virtual Observatory. A VO implementation allows astronomers to query multiple data centres in a seamless and transparent way, provides new powerful analysis and visualization tools within that system, and gives data centres a standard framework for publishing and delivering services using their data. In this project we work on the federation of CANFAR services and EGI Infrastructure, this includes the development of the overall set of IVOA standards based services and APIs to implement access control, data movement and computing interoperability in a geographically distributed cloud environment.
This activity is crucial to provide Astronomy and Astrophysics a cloud environment really suited for their requirements and it is actually under evaluation also in the framework of the ASTERICS project in particular for what regards the SKA project needs and requirements.
In this demo we describe the architectural overview of the federated infrastructure and the open source available libraries, we present the software documentation and the infrastructure setup built on top of a EGI Federated Cloud Site. We will present also a practical workflow example demonstrating a use case of data sharing between users working on the same project from both sides of the Ocean, i.e. transversally authenticated.
The work will continue integrating the virtual machine sharing to perform specific tasks like, for example, data reduction.
The large amount of datasets now available through innovative systems for Earth Observation (EO), such as the Copernicus Programme, have the potential to enable many value-added services that can be tailored to specific public or commercial needs, resulting in new dimensions of scientific insights, new business opportunities, and decision making support of policy makers. However, such data are not easily integrated into processing chains outside the Copernicus ground segment. Very often, public and private institutions aiming to deliver end-user services based on EO data do not possess the required communications infrastructure, computing power, the storage capacity or the software technology to cope with these new data flows.
Furthermore, there is a lack of truly re-usable components to solve common problems, such as the accessing, sharing, management and processing of distributed big data. This slows down and increases the costs of any new EO service development. To overcome these issues, ESA defined a generic Exploitation Platform Open Architecture [http://go.egi.eu/EP-OpenArchitecture] with the aim to harmonize the architecture of exploitation platforms (in particular the ESA Thematic Exploitation Platforms – TEPs) and make the adoption of shared solutions easier.
E-Infrastructures today rely on mature technologies that provide the network, storage and management capabilities needed to handle large amounts of research data. The services of a well-established production e-infrastructure could support the development of solutions for EO data (and big data) exploitation providing re-usable components such as those described in the ESA EP Open Architecture. E-Infrastructures can also provide the network, computing and data resources, processes and tools allowing for the proper management and exploitation of the large EO datasets being available in a fully distributed environment, ensuring the adoption of standard interfaces to make data and software reusable across various services and domains, and portable across different cloud infrastructures.
EO exploitation platforms need large capacity of IT resources and efficient data management services to fully achieve their mission. Their respective evolution is funded through different instruments within the work-programmes of the EC Directorates Connect, Growth, RTD and JRC.
This workshop will present the current landscape of the Copernicus activities in Europe, the current collaboration activities on this topic, highlighting the ongoing collaborations and the first pilots, and demonstrate how well-established e-Infrastructure services could fill the current gap related to the Copernicus data exploitation improving the EO Exploitation Platforms sustainability strategies, enlarging their capabilities for data access and provide scalable solutions that are able to bring down total cost of ownership, lower the risk, leveraging on extension and repurposing of e-infrastructure services.
IaaS Federated Access Tools provide automation in management infrastructure and enable users to deploy and manage complex applications on the resources using a template-based models and configuration management tools. These tools can also provide an abstraction layer to the hybrid cloud resources available in the EGI Federated Cloud. In this session we will cover the available tools and experiences by selected use cases.
Commercial cloud services is gaining traction in the public research sector.
While many user communities are considering commercial cloud services as a means of supporting their needs they are often unsure about how they can be procured in today’s public sector environment.
This session will present a number of current initiatives that have hands-on experience of procuring commercial cloud services for research communities. It will highlight their best practices and outline a scheme by which these can be combined to create a procurement model for the European Open Science Cloud.
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
This session will cover the use of GPGPU on the infrastructure, both Cloud and HTC, discussing what's available and how users can start making use of it and the next actions to provide a better service.
The EGI-Engage project developed a prototype of a Service Registry and Marketplace, a tool that has the ambition of becoming the platform where an ecosystem of EGI-related services, delivered by EGI providers and partners, can be promoted, discovered, shared and accessed.
This session will present this activity, describing the status of the design and development, and the policies for publishing and accessing services. Furthermore, the relationship between the marketplace and the EGI service catalogue with its Integrated Management System (IMS) process and procedures will be discussed. Next steps to move the Marketplace into operations and to enable the pay-for-use in the EGI infrastructure will be also depicted.
The session will also include a demonstration of a prototype of EGI marketplace developed using the PrestaShop technology.
This session is aimed to give the audience an understanding of the security activities in EGI and how they are evolving to accommodate changing technology, changing threats and the reduction in homogeneity of the infrastructure. We also indicate how these activities are building collaboration with other e-Infrastructures and invite others to collaborate.
This session is part of the EGI-INDIGO workshop on community application support. Further information: https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3249/page/1
This session presents the results of the INDIGO-DataCloud project and its potential impact in the context of the European Open Science Cloud
The exploitation of INDIGO-DataCloud solutions is presented, targeting different stakeholders, Research Communities (including ESFRIs), cloud service providers and also open source projects.
EGI relies on its participants, the national service providers (NGIs) and European Research Organizations to provide advanced e-infrastructure services and related support to different user groups. This sessions puts the the EGI participants in the spot light to present and discuss recent success stories and future plans concerning the operation of national e-infrastructure services, adoption of EGI services in the national context, engagement with and support for new user communities. The EGI Foundation team will update NGI teams about the tools and services that are available to them for community engagement and support projects.
The theme of this session will be Storage and Data Services. The session will include a status updates of the EGI DataHub, including an introduction and demonstration. This session will also include progress updates from early adopter use cases making use of EGI, EUDAT and INDIGO services, with an emphasis on storage and data.
A technical session oriented to discuss the specific features of the INDIGO components from the point of view of their contribution to the specific Cloud layer (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).
In this session the INDIGO Open Forum is presented as an open framework for promoting, extending and exploiting INDIGO solutions. This initial session will define the different forms of participation, and the associated benefits.
This session will present the status, roadmap and results for some of flagship H2020 projects that are research-community driven and participated by EGI. Delegates will learn about how EGI and other e-Infrastructure services and solutions can address the computing and data management needs of international research infrastructures and the development of the data science profession.
The following projects will be presented:
elitrans (https://eli-trans.eu/): Tamás Gaizer will present how bespoke e-Infrastructure solutions can support the data ingestion, collection, transfer, processing and curation requirements of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI). While the implementation of the “Extreme Light Infrastructure” ELI is nearing completion in Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, elitrans create the necessary conditions for the future operation of ELI as a single, distributed international laser user facility of pan-European dimension.
Tamás is WP10 "data and computing" co-leader and is software architect at ELI-ALPS.
AENEAS: Anna Scaife will present the "Advanced European Network of E-infrastructuresfor Astronomy with the SKA" project, whose objective is to develop a concept and design for a distributed, federated European Science Data Centre (ESDC) to support the astronomical community in achieving the scientific goals of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The scientific potential of the SKA radio telescope is unprecedented and represents one of the highest priorities for the international scientific community. By the same token, the large scale, rate, and complexity of data the SKA will generate, present challenges in data management, computing, and networking that are similarly world-leading. SKA Regional Centres (SRC) like the ESDC will be a vital resource to enable the community to take advantage of the scientific potential of the SKA. Within the tiered SKA operational model, the SRCs will provide essential functionality which is not currently provisioned within the directly operated SKA facilities. AENEAS brings together all the European member states currently part of the SKA project as well as potential future EU SKA national partners, the SKA Organisation itself, and a larger group of international partners including the two host countries Australia and South Africa.
Anna is WP3 "Computing requirements" leader and in SKA she leads the SKA Imaging Pipeline development.
NextGEOSS (http://www.nextgeoss.eu/): is a 3.5 year project serving as a European contribution to GEOSS by developing the next generation hub for Earth Observation (EO) data where users can access data and deploy EO-based applications. The NextGEOSS project kicked off in Dec 2016 with a consortium of 27 organisations from 13 European with the objectives to: Implement a single access point, federated data hub using state-of-the-art data mining and discoverability techniques; Implement Quality of Service and community feedback mechanisms on the data hub; Access to the most relevant data sources for Europe, across all major Earth Observation domains. EGI will contribute to NextGEOSS with computing resources made available through the EGI Federated Cloud allowing the project to connect data and cloud computing resources to user communities and enable an integrated network of application support. This will initially be demonstrated through a number of scientific and business oriented pilots where EGI will offer technical advice and consultancy to identify the best solutions to get the applications up and running on an integrated cloud platform. NextGEOSS will also stimulate data exploitation by commercial enterprises with a number of business-oriented pilots, therefore EGI will support the defining formal agreements for long-term business relationships beyond the life of the project.
EDISON (http://edison-project.eu/): Yuri Demchenko will present the results of EDISON - the "Education for Data Intensive Science to Open New science frontiers" project, focused on establishing the new profession of ' Data Scientist', following the emergence of Data Science technologies (also referred to as Data Intensive or Big Data technologies) which changes the way research is done, how scientists think and how the research data are used and shared. This includes definition of the required skills, competences framework/profile, corresponding Body Of Knowledge and model curriculum. EDISON is developing a sustainability/business model to ensure a sustainable increase of Data Scientists, graduated from universities and trained by other professional education and training institutions in Europe.
Yuri coordinates EDISON and is Senior Researcher at the System and Network Engineering Research Group of the University of Amsterdam.
EGI relies on its participants, the national service providers (NGIs) and European Research Organizations to provide advanced e-infrastructure services and related support to different user groups. This sessions puts the the EGI participants in the spot light to present and discuss recent success stories and future plans concerning the operation of national e-infrastructure services, adoption of EGI services in the national context, engagement with and support for new user communities. The EGI Foundation team will update NGI teams about the tools and services that are available to them for community engagement and support projects.
A technical session oriented to discuss the specific features of the INDIGO components from the point of view of their contribution to the specific Cloud layer (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).
Reflecting on the context and the options, a prospective external analysis of INDIGO project and the solutions developed will be presented.
Don't forget to bring your badge!
The events' social dinner will be at the Palazzo Biscari in Catania.
The address is: Via Museo Biscari, 10, 95131 Catania CT, Italy
The session will present the general analysis on Data Ingestion done in the INDIGO DataCloud project and the specific results for four Case Studies
Summary session with presentation of the outcomes of the sessions and corresponding discussions