Update on Activities of theSURA Grid Planning Group

Ed Seidel (and Gary Crane)Co-Chair, SURA Grid Planning Group

Director, Center Computation & Technology

Louisiana State University

March 22, 2005

• Foundational Elements– Connectivity– HPC– Grids

• Program Development– SCOOP– Bio-Informatics/Bio-Med Research

SURA IT Strategy - Highest Priorities*

* From SURA IT Strategic Plan as presented at March 2004 SURA IT/HPC meeting

SURA IT Committee Strategic Plan

Grids/Middleware Program• Develop education/training for grid implementations• Establish SURA as regional focal point for

middleware deployment and grid implementation• Identify and developing extra-regional partnerships

that enhance SURA regional Grid activities• Leverage the NSF Advanced CyberInfrastructure,

other funding programs for the benefit of the region• Promote common policies & standards• Foster use of Grid tech by existing SURA groups:

JLab, SCOOP, Bio-Med, HPC, Cybersecurity…• Develop a regional Grid deployment white paper

SURA Grids Program • How to achieve these goals?

– Utilize existing resources for project planning• Current IT Staff to lead/facilitate• SURA IT Committee members to advise/participate• Logistics and meeting support from SURA DC

– Devote one SURA staff FTE to regional grid activities– SURA to support regional workshop on development of grids and

deployment of middleware/grid software• Establish on-going working group among workshop attendees

– Use existing resources (SURA IT staff and Testbed participants) for cross-communication with other SURA programs

GridPlan Working Group

• The SURA Grids Initiatives Planning Group (GridPlan) – developing SURA regional action plan for the

development and deployment of Grid services

– support mission and goals of SURA and updated SURA IT strategy

• Group formed over Summer of 2004• Began (almost) bi-weekly meetings Sept. 22, 2004

GridPlan Charge• Formulate strategy for developing a shared vision for

a SURA Grid initiative in support of major regional e-science applications.

• Approach - engage the Grids and High Performance Computing leaders in the SURA region in collaborative Grid development projects. – community involvement – targeted technology development – awareness/outreach activities – incremental and evolutionary approach to developing a

substantial and persistent Grids capability for the SURA region

Initial SURA GridPlan Participants

Paul Avery (UFL)

Amy Apon (UARK)

John (Jay) Boisseau (UT Austin)

Kelvin Droegemeier (UOK)

Sara Graves (UAB)

Peter Highnam (NIH)

Stephen Moore (Georgetown)

Richard Newman (FIT)

Daniel Reed (UNC)

John Rose (USC)

Art Vandenberg (GSU)

Ed Seidel (LSU) - working group co-chairJed Diem (Tulane) - working group co-chair

SURA staff support: Gary Crane, Mary Fran Yafchak, Sue Fratkin

GridPlan Group

• The GridPlan group approached this task by forming working groups to address four specific areas of development:– Applications - Leads: Ed Seidel, Sara Graves– Infrastructure - Leads: Art Vandenberg, Mary Fran

Yafchak– Awareness - Leads: Steve Moore, Paul Avery– Funding - Leads: Jed Diem, Gary Crane, Sue Fratkin

• Each working group lead will present on current activities

Applications Working Group(Ed, Sara)

– Climate/Coastal Modeling• SCOOP, LEAD

– GSU proteomics– Relativity

– General Bio-Med

– Computational Chemistry• GridChem

• Identify research applications that could benefit from and demonstrate the capabilities of a SURA Grid (SURAgrid)

• Regionally important apps• Identify new requirements for the SURAgrid needed to support Grid enabled research applications.

• Feed back into the infrastructure group as development requests

• Possible targeted areas include:

Applications Strategies • Identify series of demo apps across region to

raise awareness• Find passionate champions for app areas*

• Identify & exploit commonality/synergies between projects– Relativity, SCOOP, UCoMS, others: task farming– SCOOP, LEAD, UCoMS, etc: DDDAS

• Find common approaches, tool use, technologies– Look for funding to exploit these

• Connect to GGF, other activities– Standardization beginning, SURA region can influence,

capitalize by bringing to region– Emerging large scale grids: OSG, Tgrid, others

*with time

Infrastructure Working Group(Art, Mary Fran)

• Building on the work of the SURA Testbed Grid community, focused on two core activities

– Development of a regional bridging Certificate Authority

– Development of a SURAgrid Portal

• SURA has approved the use of $101,000 from the SURA IT Fund to support these activities while more substantial external funding is sought.

SURAgrid Participating Members

UAH

George Mason

Tulane

Georgia State LSU

UVA

Texas Tech

USC

U of Michigan

U of Arkansas

UT Austin

ULL

U of Mississippi

UAB

UFL

U of South Carolina

Awareness Working Group(Steve, Paul)

• This group augments the workshop planning group that planned and executed the successful SURA Grids Workshop held at Georgia State University early in January. Current activities include:– Developing a SURA Grids workshop series

– Developing a Grids Cookbook

– Developing a regional inventory of Grid resources and applications.

Funding Working Group(Jed, Gary, Sue)

• Working closely with other groups to identify funding sources (government, industry and private) interested in supporting the development and deployment of Grid computing capabilities.

• Currently working with federal agencies to explore funding for expansion of SURAgrid and creation of regional Grid services.

GridPlan Working Group

Conclusions - Recommendations• Get involved in one of the 4 working groups to

help shape a SURA regional Grid initiative. Contacts:– Applications: Ed Seidel (eseidel@cct.lsu.edu) – Infrastructure: Mary Fran Yafchak

(maryfran@sura.org)– Awareness: Steve Moore (moores@georgetown.edu) – Funding: Gary Crane (gcrane@sura.org)