User Community Services in the European Grid Infrastructure 01 March

User Community Services in the European Grid Infrastructure 01 March 2009 EGEE User Forum – Catania, Italy Diana Cresti, INFN and Charles Loomis, CNRS [email protected] - [email protected]

Contents Representation of User Communities and EIROForum members in the EGI Management Structure The EGI Specialised Support Centres and User Forum EGEE Perspective Example: Life Science SSC Summary 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 2

The EGI Management Structure Non-voting Representatives Chair of UFSC, extra-EU NGIs, Members NGI1, NGI2, NGI3, NGIn User Forum Steering Committee (UFSC) Associate Members CERN, EBI, ESA, EGI Council EGI.org EGI Director Advisory Committees e.g. Middleware Coordination Board (MCB) 1 March 2009 UCO CTO CTO CAO CAO COO COO User User Coord Coord Development Development Admin Admin & & PR PR Operations Operations User Comm Services Development Group Administration & PR Group Operations Group EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 3

EGI Council Associate Members Currently CERN; Have had some contact with people from ESA and EMBL-EBI to consider associate membership; No specific rules for this kind of membership; expect to get feedback from these institutions as the project evolves. 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 4

Specialised Support Centres The EGI SSCs are established and governed by the user communities. In the context of EGI, an SSC is defined as a centre (or cluster of activities) that has a formal relationship with EGI in terms of the collaborative UCS activities described in D3.1 and D3.2 SSCs do not require full NGI consensus to be established Initial SSCs to be defined during the drafting of the EGI proposal; EGI DS and EGEE are working with the user communities to help define these entities. An example for the Life Sciences is given below. In the future, SSC proposals will be evaluated by the EGI Council in consultation with the User Forum Steering Committee (details t.b.d.) SSCs should interact closely with the central EGI.org UCS team (described in the EGI Blueprint) See also http://knowledge.eu-egi.eu/index.php/Specialised Support Centres 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 5

The EGI User Forum and SSCs EGI User Forum User Forum Steering Committee - UFSC SSC11 SSC22 NGI UCS UCS SSC33 SSC SSC SSCnn SSC NGI UCS UCS SSC SSC NGI NGI UCS User Technical Support (e.g. USAG) EGI Middleware Coordination Board - MCB MW 1 March 2009 OPS EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy UCS 6

EGEE Scientific Communities EGEE clusters generally accept the SSC model as viable way to organize scientific user communities. – Likely that EGEE clusters will become SSCs. – Active planning: LS, ES, HEP, AA. – Expressed interest: CC, F, GO. Many open questions: – Scope: What community? Mandate? – Funding: Who pays? Short term, long term? – Procedures: Who approves? Who’s eligible? 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 7

EGEE Support Activities SSC model will probably also work for current EGEE support activities: – Direct User Support – VO Support – Application Porting Support How will these types of SSC function? – How to define mandate, organization? – How to work when clients are outside of SSC? 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 8

“Outside” Users Not all users will be covered by an SSC. EGI must work to expand breadth and size of the grid user community. – Infrastructure must remain open to VOs and users outside of SSCs. – EGI must provide (directly or indirectly) standard support services to all users. 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 9

Example: Life Science SSC Several thematic clusters: Bioinformatics, Medical Imaging, Drug Discovery and Health. All these communities have expressed a need to access cluster grids and supercomputers, thus require integration of these resources on the grid. The SSC will dedicate specific effort for a LS Gateway – Providing friendly user interfaces – Collecting/linking to LS resources (data, tools, projects, ) – Providing support for collaborative work Also very important are international standards (OGF, Web Services) 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 10

ESFRI ELIXIR EGI INSTRUCT Integrated Structural Biology Infrastructure www.instruct-fp7.eu Infrafrontier Infrastructure for Phenomefrontier and Archivefrontier www.infrafrontier.eu EATRIS The European Advanced Translational Research Infrastructure www.eatris.eu/ BBMRI European Biobanking And Biomolecular Resources www.biobanks.eu ECRIN Infrastructures For Clinical Trials And Biotherapy www.ecrin.org ELIXIR Upgrade Of European Bioinformatics Infrastructure www.elixir-europe.org Research Target ID Target Val Discovery Hit Lead Lead Opt Development Preclinical Phase I Phase II Phase III INSTRUCT Infrafrontier EATRIS BBMRI ECRIN (Structural biology) (Model Organisms) (Translational Research) (Biobanking) (Clinical Trials) ELIXIR (Life Science Information) Image courtesy of Andrew Lyall (Elixir) 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 11

Life Science SSC – possible UCS Layer EGI general LS SSC SSC Chair (UF Rep) Application DB Grid Planning Board Hi-Level Tools GPO “RESPECT” EGI User Forum Steering Committee EGI.org MCB (Grid Planning) UCS OPS MW LS Gateway Content Management User Tech Support Info Tools Ops Usr Tech Sup SSC Front Desk 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy EGI User Tech Support Group (e.g. USAG) Other Front desk/consulting 12

Summary SSC model is generally viewed as viable means of organizing the user community. How an SSC works inside of the EGI organization has been defined. Resolving open SSC questions via concrete proposals for SSCs from EGEE clusters. 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 13

Future Work Must understand how non-scientific SSCs will be formed and will function. Must understand how user communities “outside” of SSCs will be served by EGI. These questions will be tackled by a dedicated User Communities task force that includes NGI representatives (or their delegates), collaborating projects, and user community support specialists. Recommend that NGIs have similar taskforces, and begin to delineate their level of contribution to SSCs and other NGI international tasks 1 March 2009 EGEE User Forum - Catania, Italy 14