Speaker
Dr
Jamie Shiers
(CERN)
Description
The WLCG service has been declared officially open for production and analysis during the LCG Grid Fest held at CERN - with live contributions from around the world - on Friday 3rd October 2008. But the service is not without its problems - services or even sites suffer degradation or complete outage with painful repercussions on experiment activities, the operations and service model is arguably not sustainable at this level but yet an important element of the funding comes to and end approximately one year after this conference! Cloud computing - which has been referred to as Grid computing with a viable business model - makes ambitious claims. Could it solve all - or even a significant fraction, say Monte Carlo production - of our computing problems? What would be the associated costs, technical and sociological implications? This presentation analyzes the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of these potential rival models from the viewpoint of the current WLCG service. It makes proposals for studies that should be performed - beyond existing largely paper analyses - and highlights some key differentiators between the two approaches.
Summary
An analysis of whether Cloud Computing could satisfy all or part of the computing needs currently provided by the WLCG service from technical, sociological and funding viewpoints.
Primary author
Dr
Jamie Shiers
(CERN)
