Taking a researcher’s e-Infrastructure to the next level Nicole Grégoire Internet2 Spring meeting – April 24, 2012

Outline Community Management @ SURFnet Enlighten Your Research contest Use cases Enlighten Your Research 4

Community Managers Research Currently a team of 3 people (2.6 fte) Background in research Representing the users/researchers within SURFnet Relationship management with: Individual researchers Research groups / virtual research organizations e-Infrastructure partners

User Participation Create awareness about services created in the Gigaport3 program and new possibilities they offer; Involve users and (virtual) organizations; Find and create use cases together with early adopters; Collect user requirements  user driven innovation; Identify and remove barriers for adoption; Stimulate usage. Within the Gigaport3 program we are responsible for the workpackage User Participation

Outreach activities Workshops, seminars (SURFacademy) Market & user surveys BoD User Group Support Teams (in collaboration with partners) Contests (Enlighten Your Research) To prevent that it is filled with technical details that no user understands, we decided to involve network experts and researchers in the development of the software. Every 6 weeks, they come to SURFnet to meet the new developments and to give their opinion about the new version.

Enlighten your Research A contest for researchers organized by SURFnet. Objectives: To create awareness among researchers about the advantages that lightpaths can offer; To scout for innovative research projects that may benefit from lightpaths; To learn from the implementation process; To create best practices.

EYR1 & EYR2 EYR1 (2007) EYR2 (2008) Fixed lightpaths (national or international) Dynamic lightpaths (national) Two locations Maximum of five locations 20 Submissions (14 in second round) 7 Submissions (5 to second round) 5 winners 3 winners (14 connections)

Winners EYR2 Best practices: Pulsar Cinegrid Proteomics

Lessons Learned Use Realization Users need combination of lightpaths, computing and storage as dynamic resources. Realization SURFnet’s role does not end with connecting the lightpath; end-to-end guidance is necessary and expected Commitment between parties involved is a must Campus infrastructure not always prepared No budget to prepare campus infrastructure

Enlighten Your Research 3 Take your e-Infrastructure to the next level

Proposal Minimum of two locations (must have SURFnet connection); Scientific subject can be chosen freely; Use of technology such as: Remote storage Remote instrumentation Compute clusters  Most important is that the desired e-Infrastructure has a clear added value to the research Commitment of parties involved View on sustainability

Sustainability Reduce energy consumption in higher education sector by 30% in 2020 Sustainable examples of e-Infrastructure: Conference calls Sending data over hybrid network instead of DVDs via regular mail Green data storage

Prizes Requested storage with a maximum of 20 Terabyte; Requested compute time with a maximum of 20.000 core hours; Connectivity between the requested locations; Support; A grant of 10,000 Euro to finance the necessary infrastructure The main prize winners will be awarded 10,000 Euro award money The winner of the sustainability prize will be awarded 5,000 Euro award money.

Procedure First round Second round Team Abstract max. 500 words View on sustainability max. 150 words Second round Consultation round Technical Organizational Financial Final proposals

Consultation Round (1) General session: What type of e-Infrastructure services do they really need for their research? lightpaths: yes/no storage: yes/no compute time: yes/no Cloud or Grid infrastructure?

Consultation Round (2) Cloud/Grid session: technical details. Lightpath session: discuss the technical details of the so-called last mile, i.e. SURFnet delivers the lightpath to the SURFnet POP. The institution is responsible for the connection from the POP to the local cluster. SURFnet’s role in this is to advice on possible configurations. The lightpath sessions were held with the network experts of the institutions involved (10 national locations and 4 international locations)

Result 14 proposals proposal submitted in first round 9 proposals approved for the second round: 8 proposals include storage and/or compute time 7 proposals include lightpath connections varying from 1 Gb/s fixed and dynamic to 10 Gb/s fixed. A total of 27 lightpath ports At 14 different locations, of which 4 international (2x UK, 1x USA, 1x Hong Kong)

Winners EYR3 5 winners Flyer Best Practices

Winner sustainability prize Lightpath is a component of the simulation software itself Smart software that makes efficient use of the architecture and the resources

Water management Key in this research is a very detailed elevation map of the Netherland that can be used in case of flooding emergency. HPC cloud is used to convert raw data is useful data structures, and lightpaths allow remote visualization of the data

Climate research Climate models are used to predict future changes in the earth’s climate. Institutes worldwide are using their own climate models, but would be more effective if they were combined The lightpaths are used in a project which combines no less than 36 models of 20 countries. The models are coupled at BADC Lightpaths will [vervang] the shipping of HDD back and forth

Implementation of a centralized image processing unit to facilitate large-scale population imaging studies The CIPU will be implemented at the HPC cloud Data collected at Rotterdam and Leiden will be transmitted via fixed lightpaths TU Delft will use a dynamic lightpath to perform interactive analysis on the data

Next Generation Sequencing makes it possible to unravel the entire structure of an individual’s DNA.

Enlighten Your Research 4 EYR4 in 2013 focuses on International collaboration Want to join?

W Nicole.Gregoire[at]surfnet.nl @n_gregoire ng0503 www.surfnet.nl +31 30 230 5305 Creative Commons “Attribution” license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ W