Speaker
Mr
Francois Fluckiger
(CERN)
Description
The openlab, created three years ago at CERN, was a novel concept: to involve leading
IT companies in the evaluation and the integration of cutting-edge technologies or
services, focusing on potential solutions for the LCG. The novelty lay in the
duration of the commitment (three years during which companies provided a mix of
in-kind and in-cash contributions), the level of the contributions and more
importantly the collaborative nature of the common undertaking which materialized in
the construction of the opencluster. This phase, now called openlab-I, to which five
major companies (Enterasys, HP, IBM, Intel and Oracle) contributed, is to be
completed at the end of 2005, and a new phase, the openlab-II, is starting in 2006.
This new three year period maintains the administrative framework of openlab-I
(sufficient duration and level of contribution to permit the pursuit of ambitious
goals) and will focus more on grid software, services and standardization. openlab-
II comprises two related projects: PCC (the Platform Competence Centre Project) and
GIC (the Grid Interoperability Centre Project). These activities can be characterized
by a transversal theme: the application of virtualization to grids. The presentation
will briefly draw lessons from openlab-I as a collaborative framework for R&D and
will summarize the technical achievements. It will then describe the openlab-II
projects, their goals, differences and commonalities, and will explain how they could
contribute to the formalization of the “Virtualization for Grids” concept.
Primary author
Mr
Francois Fluckiger
(CERN)
