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

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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)

8. Winners EYR2
Best practices:
Pulsar
Cinegrid
Proteomics

9. 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

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

11. 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

12. 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

13. Prizes Requested storage with a maximum of 20 Terabyte;
Requested compute time with a maximum of 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.

14. 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

15. 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?

16. 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)

17. 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)

18. Winners EYR3
5 winners
Flyer
Best Practices

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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

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

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

25. W Nicole.Gregoire[at]surfnet.nl @n_gregoire ng0503 www.surfnet.nl
Creative Commons “Attribution” license: W