Taking a researcher’s e-Infrastructure to the next level

Nicole GrégoireInternet2 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.

Outreach activities

• Workshops, seminars (SURFacademy)• Market & user surveys• BoD User Group• Support Teams (in collaboration with

partners)• Contests (Enlighten Your Research)

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•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 •Team•Abstract max. 500 words•View on sustainability max. 150 words

Second round •Consultation round

– Technical

– Organizational

– Financial

•Final proposals

Consultation Round (1)

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)

2. Cloud/Grid session: technical details.

3. 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

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/