Speaker
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
LOFAR consists of thousands of sensors (antennas) interconnected
through
fiber connections. The LOFAR telescope is centred in the
Netherlands, but
remote antenna stations are being built, or considered to be
built, in a number
of countries across Europe. The LOFAR user community consists of
Radio
astronomers across the world accessing the LOFAR system and
scientific data
through science centers. The opportunities of the seemingly close
match to the
Grid infrastructure will be explored.
With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)
LOFAR challenges for GRID:
Being able to provide scalable and transparent storage taking
into account
storage of proprietary data.
Computational facilities providing an environment where diverse
astronomical
applications run efficiently.
Transparently and intelligently couple storage to computational
facilities
avoiding large data transfers.
Reliable and efficient data distribution mechanism preventing a
"buffer overrun"
of the LOFAR central systems.
Realtime processing of Tb/s datastreams.
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
Initiatives are taken to connect the LOFAR telescope to the GRID.
The success
will depend on the reliability, flexibility, and scalability of
the resources. The
central LOFAR system can only allow for a time/space limitted
buffer for scientific
data before it being distributed to science data centers. For the
scientific user,
GRID resources will have to provide a secure, and flexible
environment for
astronomical data analysis without exposure to technical details
of the specific
facility that is being used. The computational environment should
allow for
transparant deployment of, partly legacy, applications that
expect a specific
environment. The large quantities of data necessitate an inteligent
management of data distribution, minimizing large data transfers.
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
The aspects of LOFAR well suited to be supported by a GRID
infrastructure are
setting up scientific data centers and providing computational
facilities for
scientific analysis of the data provided by these data centers.
Current
prognosis for the LOFAR long term storage capacity is that it
will require a
growth of Petabytes per year. Even simple operations on such
amounts of data
will provide a challenge for computational resources. The data
access patterns
depend strongly on the scientific applications, and requirements
for the storage
and computational resources will be diverse. Furthermore, the
astronomical
scientist in general should not worry about the technical
implications of these
requirements and a transparent GRID based framework could provide
the
appropriate means for scientists to be able to concentrate on the
astronomical
aspect of their research. For international collaborations,
another case to be
considered is the realtime data reduction of (international)
datastreams.
