Workshop on e-Infrastructure and Grid Computing

Wednesday 31 Jan 2007, 09:15 → 17:05 Europe/Zurich

Plymouth, UK

The day comprises two sessions.

• The morning session is for researchers who understand the concepts of a Grid, and are interested to explore their use. It includes a practical using the UK's National Grid Service.
• The afternoon is an introduction to Grid concepts for researchers and others who wish to understand the promise and current status of Grid Computing.

Please note it is necessary to register for each session separately.

• To attend the morning session on middleware, including the practical session, register here
• To attend the afternoon seminar, register here

This event is being jointly run by the University of Plymouth (UoP) and the Training Outreach and Education team of the National e-Science Centre (NeSC)

Local contact at University of Plymouth: Dr. Lingfen Sun (E-mail: L.Sun@plymouth.ac.uk, Tel: 01752 233667)

Session 1: Introduction to Grid Middleware

In the first part of this session participants will be given an overview of middleware in campus, UK and international (EGEE) grids. This is illustrated by two case studies from the University of Plymouth.

After coffee the focus is on using the UK's National Grid Service.

1 Welcome and introduction

2 Middleware concepts and services in campus, national and international grids

Grids permit resource sharing across administrative domains.

• PlymGrid is a campus grid to support collaboration across the schools of the University of Plymouth.
• The National Grid Service (NGS) is the UK grid set up to support collaboration between universities.
• The EU-funded EGEE project runs an international grid that supports international collaborations.

Middleware on a grid is analagous to the operating system of a computer; it is the software that allows resources to be accessed and orchestrated.

In this talk a very brief overview of middleware is given. The middleware services deployed by PlymGrid, the NGS and EGEE are described. PlymGrid uses Condor to harvest compute cycles from networked computers, NGS uses some of the Globus toolkit, and EGEE has developed the gLite middleware .

Advances towards service oriented grids are outlined, with reference to the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA).

The data and compute services of the NGS are introduced with reference to the SRB and OGSA-DAI middleware.

Speaker: Mike Mineter (NeSC)

Slides 1_middleware.pdf 1_middleware.ppt

3 Case Study – Weight Spectrum Enumeration of Channel Coding using PlymGrid

The application is deployed over PlymGrid which involves 1500 nodes based on Condor.

Speaker: Cen Tjhai (UoP)

4 Case Study – Implementation and Applications of the BIOPATTERN Grid

The implementation is mainly based on Globus Toolkit V.4 (GT4) with OGSA-DAI for data services and Condor/Globus for computing services.

Speaker: Pin Hu (UoP)

10:45 Coffee

5 Practical: Using the National Grid Service (NGS)

Brief walk-through on gaining access to the NGS and creating/running an application.

Speaker: Mike Mineter

how to connect 3_Connecting.pdf 3_Connecting.ppt

Practical http://homepages.nesc.ac.uk/~mjm/Plymouth/Job%20Submission%20Tutorial.htm

Slides 2_Creating_And_Running_Applications.pdf 2_Creating_And_Running_Applications.ppt

6 Data services on the NGS

Talk outlining services for exposing data to grids via OGSA-DAI and sharing files via SRB.

Speaker: Mike Mineter

Slides 4_DataServices.pdf 4_DataServices.ppt

7 Next steps

Next steps for intending users: How to get an account on the NGS

Speaker: Mike Mineter

Slides 5_Next_Steps.pdf 5_Next_Steps.ppt

13:00 Lunch

Session 2: High level introduction/seminar

This session gives a high-level introduction to the concepts of Grids and e-Infrastructure and to initiatives in the University of Plymouth. It is intended for a wide audience.

13:45 Coffee

8 Opening Speech

Speaker: Prof. Emmanuel Ifeachor (UoP)

9 e-Infrastructure and Grid Computing

This talk will seek to answer five questions:

• What is e-Infrastructure?
• What is e-Research?
• What are grids?
• Why the excitement, investment and hype?
• Where are we now in progress towards the initial vision of "The Grid"?!

The goal of the talk is to help you to answer the question:
"Does all this open new horizons for my research, my School, and my University?"

Speaker: Mike Mineter

10 Grid initiatives in Plymouth -- Introduction

Speaker: Prof. Emmanuel Ifeachor (UoP)

11 A Brief History of PlymGrid

This talk will cover the following points:

• From modest beginnings to what we believe is the largest Condor pool in UK HE
• Strategies for drawing in new pool users as well as catering for experts
• Opportunities for and constraints on future PlymGrid expansion

Speaker: Dr Phil Richards (UoP)

Slides PR_PlymGRID.pdf PR_PlymGRID.ppt

12 Prospects and Limitations of Grid Computing in Particle Physics

• Modern particle physics is successfully described in terms of Quantum Field Theories. Because of the lack of direct analytical methods, some of these theories must be addressed by means of first principle numerical investigations.
• Using the Ferromagnet as a toy-model for such theories, this talk will illustrate how Grid Computing largely facilitates the calculation of observables. Limitations of Grid Computing are addressed as well: for parts of the calculation preference is given to cluster- rather than grid-facilities.

Speaker: Dr Kurt Langfeld (UoP)

Slides kurt.pdf

13 From BIOPATTERN to Bioprofiling over Grid for eHealthcare

• EU FP6 BIOPATTERN Project
• Concept of Bioprofiling
• Why over Grid
• Case study: Bioprofiling over Grid for Dementia

Speaker: Dr Lingfen Sun (UoP)

Slides Lingfen_eInfrastructure.pdf

16:00 Coffee

14 Panel Discussion

by NeSC and UoP