E-Research Infrastructure?

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E-Research Infrastructure?

[email protected]

Head, ANU Internet Futures; Grid Services Coordinator, GrangeNet; Leader, APAC Information Infrastructure Program;(PhD Mt Stromlo 1988-1992)

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A gentle (and fast!) overview

Themes: What does e-Research mean?

What kind of infrastructure is

involved?

How is it being developed? What are the problems?

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e-Research + infrastructure

The use of IT to enhance research and education!

Access resources transparently Make data readily available Make collaboration easier

Is it The Grid ?

No, and yes – the Grid is a tool in the kit

Who funds it? The Govt – when building for a large community NCRIS (SII+MNRF), ARC, eResearch-

CoordC’tee

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ANU Internet Futures

A cross-discipline, cross-campus “applied” research group e-Research infrastructure development

Objectives: To investigate and deploy advanced Internet-

based technologies that support university research and education missions.

Bring research-edge technologies into production use Engage with APAC, GrangeNet, ARIIC/SII, …, Internet2,

APAN, TERENA, …

A strong focus on User Communities Identify common requirements

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What does “Grid” mean?Analogy with the power grid A standard service (AC, 240V, 50Hz) A standard connection A standard user interface

Users do not care about Various generation schemes Deregulated market

Power auctions Synchronised generators Transmission switching, fail-over

systems Accounting and Billing

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What does “Grid” mean in IT?

Transparent use of resources Distributed, and networked

Multiple “administrative domains” Other people’s resources become available to you

Various IT resources Computing, Data, Visualisation, Collaboration, etc.

Hide complexity It should be a “black box”, one just plugs in.

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What are the bits in eRI?

Network Layer (Physical and Transmission)

(Advanced) Communications Services Layer

Grid, Middleware Services Layer

Applications and Users…

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What’s in that middle bit?

Computing

Visualisation

Collaboration

Data

Instruments

Middle-ware

(Advanced) Communications Services Layer

Applications and Users…

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Networks

Physical networks are fundamental to link researchers, observational facilities, IT facilities

Demand for high-(and flexible) bandwidth to every astronomical site

Universities, observatories, other research sites/groups GrangeNet, AARNet3, AREN, … Big city focus

Today remote sites have wet bits of string, and station wagons At least 1-10Gigabit links soon-ish (SSO, ATCA, Parkes, MSO). Getting 10-20Gigabits internationally right now,

including to the top of Mauna Kea in the next year or so Canada, US, NL, … are building/running some 40+Gb/s today

e-VLBI, larger detectors, remote control, multi-site collaboration, real-time data analysis/comparisons, …

Burst needs, as well as sustained. Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) allows for a lot more

bandwidth (80λ at 80Gb/s)

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Common Needs - Middleware

Functionality needed by all the eRI areas Minimise replication of services

Provide a standard set of interfaces To applications/users To network layer To grid services

Can be built independently of other areas

A lot of politics, policy issues enter here

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Common Needs - Middleware - 2

Authentication Something you have, something you know Somebody vouches for you

Certificate Authorities, Shibboleth, …

Authorisation Granularity of permission (resolution, slices,

…) Limits of permission (time, cycles, storage, …)

Accounting Billing, feedback to authorisation

*Collectively called AAA

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Common Needs - Middleware - 3

Security Encryption, PKI, … AAA, Non-repudiation Firewalls and protocol hurdles (NATs, proxies,…)

Resource discovery Finding stuff on the Net

Search engines, portals, registries, p2p mesh, … Capability negotiation

Can you do what I want, when I want

Network and application signalling Tell the network what services we need (QoS, RSVP, MPLS, …) Tell the application what the situation is And listen for feedback and deal with it.

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The Computational Grid

Presume Middleware issues are solved…

Probably the main Grid activity

Architectural Issues CPUs, endian-ness, executable format, libraries; non-uniform networking; Clusters vs SMP,

NUMA, …; Code design

Master/Slave, P2P; Granularity (Fine-grained parallelism vs (coarse) parameter sweep) Scheduling

Multiple owners; Queuing systems; Economics (How to select computational resources, and prioritise)

During execution Job Monitoring and Steering; Access to resources (Code, data, storage, …)

But if we solve all these: Seamless access to computing resources across the planet. Harness the power of supercomputers, large->small clusters,

and corporate/campus desktops (Campus-Grid)

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Computing facilities

University computing facilities, within departments or centrally.

Standout facilities. The APAC partnership (www.apac.edu.au)

Qld: QPSF partnership, several facilities around UQ, GU, QUT NSW: ac3 (at ATP Everleigh) ACT: ANU - APAC peak facility, upgraded in 2005 (top 30 in the

world) Vic: VPAC (RMIT) SA: SAPAC (U.Adelaide?) WA: IVEC (UWA) Tas: TPAC (U.Tas)

Other very noteworthy facilities, such as Swinburne's impressive clusters. There are bound to be others, and more are planned.

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Data GridsLarge-scale, distributed, “federated” data repositories

Making complex data available Scholarly output and scholarly input:

Observations, simulations, algorithms, …

to applications and other grid services in the “most efficient” way

Performance, cost, …

in the “most appropriate” way within the same middleware AAA framework

in a sustainable and trustworthy way

16Content Archive

Content Archive Interface

Metadata(Ontologies, Semantics, DRM, …)

User

Queries/R

esults, Curatio

n

ACCESS! and account

Computing

Visualisation

Collaboration

Directories:AAA, Capabilities

Workflows, DRM,…

Rep.

Rep.

Rep.Hardware, Software

A set of Repositories, sharing a purpose ora theme

Data Grid 101

Presentation

Authenticate, Authorise

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Data Grid Issues Every arrow is a protocol, Every interface is a standard Storage: hardware, software; file format standards, algorithms Describing data: metadata, external orthographies, dictionaries Caching/replication: Instances (non-identical), identifiers,

derivatives Resource discovery: Harvesting, registries, portals Access: security, rights-management (DRM), anonymity; authsn.

granularity

Performance: delivery in appropriate form and size, ; user-meaningful user interface (Rendering/presentation – by location and culture)

Standards, and the excess thereof

Social engineering: Putting data online is An effort – needs to be easier, obvious A requirement! – but not enforced; lacks processes Not recognised nor rewarded

PAPER publishing is!

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Data facilitiesIn most cases these are inside departments, or maybe central

services on a university.

ANU/APAC host a major storage facility (tape robot) in Canberra

that is available for the R&E community to make use of Currently 1.2Petabytes peak, and connected to GrangeNet and AARNet3. It hosts the MSO MACHO-et-al data set at the moment, and more is to

come. To be upgraded every 2 years or so – factor of 2-5 in capacity each time

If funding is found, each time. Needs community input. Doesn’t suit everyone (yet)

Mirror/collaborating facilities in other cities in AU and overseas being discussedIntegration with local facilitiesVO initiatives – all data from all observatories and computers…

Govt initiatives under ARIIC – APSR, ARROW, MAMS, ADT

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Collaboration and Visualisation

A lot of intersection between the two Beyond videoconferencing - telepresence Sharing not just your presence, but also your research

Examples: Multiple sites of Large-scale data visualisation, computational steering,

engineering and manufacturing design, bio-molecular modelling and visualisation, Education and training

What’s the user interface? Guided tour vs independent observation Capability negotiation, local or remote rendering (Arbitrary) application sharing

Tele-collaboration (Co-laboratories) Revolve around the Access Grid

www.accessgrid.org

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Access Grid “Nodes”A collection of interactive, multimedia centres that support collaborative work

distributed large-scale meetings, sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials and training.

High-end, large-scale “tele-collaboration” facilities Or can run on a single laptop/PDA

Videoconferencing dramatically improved But not the price Much better support for

multi-site, multi-camera, multi-application interaction Flexible, open design

Over 400 in operation around the world 30+ in operation, design or construction in Australia 4+ at ANU

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AccessGrid facilitiesUniversity hosted nodes are generally available for researchers from any area to use,

you just need to make friends with their hosts.

Qld: JCU-Townsville, CQU-several cities, UQ, QUT, CQU, SQU, GU (Nathan, GoldCoast)

NSW: USyd, UNSW(desktop), UTS ACT: ANU (4+, one at Mt Stromlo. SSO has been suggested) Vic: UMelb (soon), Monash-Caulfield, VPAC (by RMIT), Swinburne (desktop),

U.Ballarat (desktop) SA: U.Adelaide (1 desktop and 1 room), Flinders (soon), UniSA (planning) WA: UWA (IVEC) Tas: UTas (soon) NT: I wish!

Another 400+ around the world.Development by many groups, Australia has some leadership

[email protected]

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Visualisation Facilities

Active visualisation research community in Australia

OzViz'04 at QUT 6-7 Dec 2004. Major nodes with hard facilities include

ANU-VizLab, Sydney-VisLab, UQ/QPSF-VisLab, IVEC-WA, I-cubed (RMIT), Swinburne, etc.

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Online InstrumentsRemote, collaborative access to unique / scarce instruments:

Telescopes, Microscopes, Particle accelerators, Robots, Sensor arrays

Need to interface with other eRI services

Computation – analysis of data Data – for storage, comparison Visualisation – for human

analysis Collaboration – to share the

facility

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So, in summary:Transparent use of various IT resources

Research and education processes Make existing ones easier and better Allow new processes to be developed

Are we there yet? Not even close!! But development in many areas is promising In some situations, the problems are not technical but

political/social Some of the results already are very useful

Astronomy needs to help the processes, to help Astronomy!