Projects

MetaCentrum in the frame of development of grid technologies participated and currently actively participates in the whole range of international projects.

ELIXIR-EXCELERATE - ELIXIR-EXCELERATE: Fast-track ELIXIR implementation and drive early user exploitation across the life-sciences. The life sciences are undergoing a transformation. Modern experimental tools study the molecules, reactions, and organisation of life in unprecedented detail. The precipitous drop in costs for high-throughput biology has enabled European research laboratories to produce an ever-increasing amount of data. Life scientists are rapidly generating the most complex and heterogeneous datasets that science can currently imagine, with unprecedented volumes of biological data to manage. Data will only generate long-term value if it is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR). This requires a scalable infrastructure that connects local, national and European efforts and provides standards, tools and training for data stewardship. Formally established as a legal entity in January 2014, ELIXIR - the European life science Infrastructure for Biological Information - is a distributed organisation comprising national bioinformatics research infrastructures and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). This coordinated infrastructure includes data standards, exchange, interoperability, storage, security and training. Recognising the importance of a data foundation for European life sciences, the ESFRI and European Council named ELIXIR as one of Europe’s priority Research Infrastructures. In response ELIXIR have developed ELIXIR-EXCELERATE. The project will fast-track ELIXIR’s early implementation phase by i) coordinate and enhance existing resources into a world-leading data service for academia and industry, ii) grow bioinformatics capacity and competence across Europe, and iii) complete the management processes needed for a large distributed infrastructure.

Development and integration activities in Compute Platform workpackage, with aim of AAI in clouds.

Info:

MAGIC (H2020-INFRASUPP-2014-2) Middleware for collaborative Applications and Global vIrtual Communities | Title: | |

The MAGIC Project seeks to establish a set of agreements for Europe, Latin America and other participating World Regions, aiming at consolidating and completing the building blocks of middleware necessary for the establishment of a marketplace of services and real-time applications for international and inter-continental research groups which facilitates mobility and the work of global science communities. More specifically, the project specific goals are: * To foster the deployment of the platforms that enable mobility of people and seamless access to services by promoting the establishment of identity federations interconnected via eduGAIN, creating awareness of privacy and security issues and spreading eduroam by: sharing experiences, carrying out training and making available shared infrastructure to ease the process in the partner world regions. * To develop a model for inter-operation between NREN cloud application markets of participating world regions, based on cloud provisioning and taking advantage of applications developed and run by NRENs across different continents to create a model for a worldwide application market for collaboration tools and services * To seek consensus among participating world regions on the importance of interoperability of real-time applications and work towards the adoption of standards such as those proposed by the Global CEO Forum to promote the creation of a worldwide environment for these applications. * To foster the collaborative work of Global Science Communities by actively promoting the participation of Latin American and other regions’ researchers in European Commission Calls and those of other international funding agencies with high impact in the participating regions and other networking activities.

In the context of the MAGIC project, CESNET will offer their expertise in the area of group management and federated access. CESNET has manpower in WP1, WP2, WP3:

* WP1 Management * WP2 Platforms for Mobility - To promote, coordinate and support the effort to create in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia an authorisation and authentication infrastructure (AAI) for academic services and processes * WP3 Cloud provisioning and Groupware Standards

AARC (H2020-EINFRA-2014-2) Authentication and Authorisation for Research and Collaboration | Title: | |

The goal of AARC is to address technical and functional gaps that prevent the interoperability of existing R&E AAIs. AARC objectives are:

* Deliver the design of an integrated cross-discipline AAI framework, built on federated access production services (eduGAIN) * Increase the uptake of federated access within different research communities * Pilot critical components of the proposed integrated AAI where existing production services do not address user needs * Validate the results of both the JRA and SA by engaging with the research communities

In the context of the AARC project, CESNET will offer their expertise in the area of group management and federated access for non-web applications. CESNET has manpower in JRA1 and SA1:

* JRA1 Architectures for an integrated and interoperable AAI - Identify and overcome technical, organisational and legal obstacles that hinder seamless interoperability and user experience among existing AAIs. * SA1 Pilots on the integrated AAI - The work in SA1 will be driven by use-cases that will be selected as a result of the work of JRA1 and in consultation with the user communities and e-Infrastructure providers. The pilots will have to demonstrate that the solutions proposed by JRA1 and NA3 are effective in addressing the requirements of both users communities and different service providers (commercial and non-commercial) in terms of usability, security, reliability and provided functionalities. Some of the SA1 work will start in parallel with JRA1 and NA3, based on the already known requirements; the other part of the work will commence when the interim results of both JRA1 and NA3 are available. SA1 feedback from the pilots will be taken into account for NA3 and JRA1 to refine their final results.

http://www.egi.eu/news-and-media/newsfeed/news_2015_002.html

INDIGO-Datacloud (H2020-EINFRA-2014-1) INtegrating Distributed data Infrastructures for Global ExplOitation | Title: | |

INDIGO-DataCloud (INtegrating Distributed data Infrastructures for Global ExplOitation) aims at developing a data/computing platform targeted at scientific communities, deployable on multiple hardware, and provisioned over hybrid (private or public) e-infrastructures. The expertise of the INDIGO consortium builds on the body of work of several research groups with significant and unrivalled experience in middleware development for production-class distributed e-infrastructures. The quality of their achievements is demonstrated by the results of previous projects and initiatives carried out in Europe across the past ten years of collaborations on scientific computing based on different consolidated and emerging paradigms (HPC, Grid and Cloud). In INDIGO, key European developers, resource providers, e-infrastructures and scientific communities have joined to ensure the successful exploitation and sustainability of the project outcome. INDIGO will develop and deliver software components allowing execution of applications on Cloud and Grid based infrastructures, as well as on HPC clusters. The project will extend existing PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions, allowing public and private e-infrastructures, including those provided by EGI, EUDAT, PRACE and Helix Nebula, to integrate their existing services, make them available through AAI services compliant with GEANT’s interfederation policies, thus guaranteeing transparency and trust in the provisioning of such services. In Cloud computing, both the public and private sectors are already offering Cloud resources as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). However, there are numerous areas of interest to scientific communities where Cloud computing uptake is currently lacking, especially at the PaaS and SaaS (Software as a Service) levels. INDIGO therefore aims at developing tools and platforms based on Open Source solutions addressing scientific challenges in the Cloud computing, storage and network areas. A key strength and benefit of the INDIGO consortium, for both the scientific and industrial sectors, is the potential to create a new sustainable Cloud competence in Europe for PaaS, similar to what OpenNebula or OpenStack have done for IaaS.

Work package 3 Software Management and Pilot Services (WP3, SA) (WP deputy leader: CESNET) will support service activities, that in INDIGO are mainly oriented to guarantee a high quality software management, and a successful deployment of pilot services. We participate in:

* T3.2 Software release and maintenance * T3.3 Pilot services

Work package 4 Resource Virtualization (WP4, JRA) focuses on virtualizing local compute, storage and networking resources (IaaS) and on providing those resources in a standardized, reliable and performing way to remote customers or to higher level federated services, building virtualized site independent platforms. With higher-level services we mainly, but not exclusively, refer to the platform services provided by WP5. We participate in:

T4.3 Network Virtualization (CESNET is the leader) - Milestones for the networking area: * M4.18: Prototype implementation for local virtual networks * M4.1: Results of cross-sites virtual network solution evaluation * M4.20: Providing results of first SDN orchestration evaluation * M4.21: Proposals and pilot versions of tools for using SDN across sites

Work package 5 PaaS Platform Development (WP5, JRA). Design and implementation of a PaaS layer allowing scientific communities to exploit, in a powerful and high-level way, several heterogeneous computing and data e-infrastructure such as: IaaS Cloud, Helix Nebula, EGI Grid, EGI Federated Cloud, PRACE, HPC, EUDAT, etc. It will be possible to process large amounts of data and to exploit the efficient storage and preservation technologies and infrastructure already available in the European e-infrastructure, with the appropriate mechanisms to ensure security and privacy. We participate in:

* T5.2 Security and Authorization (Lead Partner: INFN; deputy: CESNET)

http://www.egi.eu/news-and-media/newsfeed/news_2015_002.html

EGI - Engage (H2020-EINFRA-2014-2) Engaging the EGI Community towards an Open Science Commons | Title: | |

EGI-Engange project continues the transition towards the sustainable pan-European e-Infrastrusture initiated within series of EGEE*/EGI* projects through support of Grids of high-performance and high-throughput computing.

The mission of EGI-Engage is to accelerate the implementation of the Open Science Commons vision, where researchers from all disciplines have easy and open access to the innovative digital services, data, knowledge and expertise they need for their work. The Open Science Commons is grounded on three pillars: the e-Infrastructure Commons, an ecosystem of key services; the Open Data Commons, where any researcher can access, use and reuse data; and the Knowledge Commons, in which communities have shared ownership of knowledge and participate in the co-development of software and are technically supported to exploit state-of-the-art digital services. EGI-Engage will expand the capabilities offered to scientists (e.g. improved cloud or data services) and the spectrum of its user base by engaging with large Research Infrastructures (RIs), the long-tail of science and industry/SMEs. The main engagement instrument will be a network of eight Competence Centres, where National Grid Initiatives (NGIs), user communities, technology and service providers will join forces to collect requirements, integrate community-specific applications into state-of-the-art services, foster interoperability across e-Infrastructures, and evolve services through a user-centric development model. The project will also coordinate the NGI efforts to support the long-tail of science by developing ad hoc access policies and by providing services and resources that will lower barriers and learning curves.

MetaCentrum represents Czech national grid environment and provides all necessary services to allow seamless integration of national resources and local end users into pan-European grid infrastructure.

We participate in the following EGI-Engage's Work Packages:

* WP3/JRA1.1 – AAI, JRA1.4 – Operational tools * WP4/JRA2.2 – Fed Cloud * WP5/SA1.3 – Platforms operation * WP6/SA2.1 – Training, SA2.2 – User support, SA2.3 – ELIXIR ESFRI Competence Centre, SA2.4 – BBMRI Competence Centre, SA2.5 – MoBrain Competence Centre

http://www.egi.eu/

Title:

EGI InSPIRE project continues the transition towards the sustainable pan-European e-Infrastrusture initiated within series of EGEE projects through support of Grids of high-performance and high-throughput computing. The project will provide a central coordinating organinisation necessary to integrate and interoperate individual national grid infrastructures (NGIs), collect requirements and provide user-support for the current and new users and define, verify and integrate within the Unified Middleware Distribution (UMD), the middleware from external providers needed to access the e-Infrastructure.

MetaCentrum goals:

Primary goal of MetaCentrum is to provide all required services as grid operations, monitoring, and helpdesk system at the national level thus allowing incorporation of Czech grid environment into EGI ecosystem and simultaneously enable Czech researchers to become users of the European wide EGI infrastructure.

http://www.egi.eu/

The European Middleware Initiative is a collaboration of the three major middleware providers in Europe, ARC, gLite and UNICORE, and other consortia. EMI aims to deliver a consolidated set of middleware components for deployment in EGI, PRACE and other Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs), extend the interoperability between grids and other computing infrastructures and establish a sustainable model to maintain and evolve the middleware, fulfilling the requirements of the user communities.

MetaCentrum goals:

MetaCentrum goal within EMI project is to contribute for the development of specific components of the planned UMD middleware distribution by provision of expertise of development and maintenance of code related to specific services (as logging and bookkeeping, and others).

http://www.eu-emi.eu/

CHAIN project aims to coordinate and leverage current grid efforts and their results with a vision of a harmonised and optimised interaction model for e-Infrastructure and specifically Grid interfaces between Europe and the rest of the world. The project will define a coherent operational and organisational model, where a number of EU countries/regions will possibly act, in collaboration with EGI project, as bridges/gateways to other regions and continents.

MetaCentrum goals:

The main goal for MetaCentrum will be to participate on definition of processes and rules required for building a uniform worlwide grid sustainable infrastructure.

http://www.chain-project.eu/