Report from the EELA External Advisory Committee V. Breton, F. Gagliardi, M. Kunze 5/9/2006

General comments The project is making significant progress from a slow start, good: –WP1: submission of deliverables on time, organization of the project, distribution of EC funding, but cohesion within the consortium needs improvement and as well learning the EU mode of operations –WP2: deployment of the EELA infrastructure, LA certification and registration authorities, mini data challenges Clarify the storage deployed and would be helpful to have in addition an indication on resource consumption per application area RedClara currently ends in March 2007: What are EELA fallback solutions if funding from the EU is not extended? –WP3: identification of applications, installation of existing HEP and biomedical applications, development and installation of the first EELA application –WP4:public web site, tutorials, questionnaire for new communities

WP2 specific comments From deliverable DWP1.4.1 –Exact status of the testbed: 6 or 8 resource centers ? Discrepancy between table 2 p27 and table 9 p24 Inconsistency in table 12 p.27: total storage, the number should be around 66 TB, not 1.6 TB. –Future of Red Clara network is key to the future infrastructure deployment –One of the identified issues is searching new middleware options for CPU scavenging, BOINC used by the LHC & projects (contact: Francois CERN) Interface between BOINC and gLite is under development as far as I know Other M/ware for P2P applications developed in LATAM (Brazil) to be investigated

WP3 specific comments (1/3) BiG is a very good project –General need for performing Grid-enabled BLAST server (synergy with Bioinfogrid could be explored) –Questions Performances is key to adoption by biologists Response time from ULA portal to UPV resources –Interest to have BiG presented at next NA4 Biomed meeting to get it approved as an EGEE application

WP3 specific comments (2/3) WISDOM –New submission environment under development ready for test by mid September Available October 1st –No target so far received from EELA for second data challenge starting in October If a target is to be contributed by EELA, its structure must be URGENTLY sent to Vinod Kasam WISDOM specific MoU or part of MoU between EELA and EGEE-II

WP3 specific comments (3/3) Major issue: limited resources in WP3 (8.37 instead of 27 from TA) –Lack of adoption by LA partners ? –Concern in view of the number of applications selected for HEP and Biomed and proposed for e- learning and climate Recommendation: focus on LA specific applications –Biomed: BiG –HEP: PAO seems a very exciting perspective that deserves full attention

WP4 specific comments Training and education is essential to attract new users to the Grid The WP has been very active and successful in leveraging synergy with other related projects Put more effort into "Train regional trainers" activities We suggest to use in addition localized (i.e. Spanish) material to overcome language barriers in a rapid take up

Areas for concern Not all sites connected (Cuba?) Not all partners spending according to the original profile, this is dangerous Important to build a working consortium and demonstrate modest but achievable objectives This should be the primary target for the first review Choose a few but significant applications Industrial relevance Outreach needs to improve, no one knew of this project in the most important universities and research centres FG visited last week in Brazil The focus should remain to expand and continue in EU FP7 Future of international network connectivity (Alice) on the critical path Dependency on EGEE infrastructure and M/ware is also critical