the omii-europe project and the impact of european union funding

The OMII-Europe Project and the Impact of European Union Funding

Dr Alistair Dunlop

University of Southampton

EU project: RIO31844-OMII-EUROPE

Talk Overview

• EU Funding– What’s the Motivation– Preparing a bid– Running a project

• OMII-Europe– How has EU funding shaped OMII-Europe?– An overview of the project and its constituent parts


Motivation - Why pursue EU funding for OMII-Europe? I

• Preface…– OMII-Soton already exists with goals to

• Reuse, reengineer and integrate grid software components that have already been developed within the UK e-science programme

– EU officials liked OMII model and wanted an equivalent within EU

• Also exists within USA in NMI

– Hence a call was created within FP6 (framework Programme 6) to fund an equivalent entity


Motivation - Why pursue EU funding for OMII-Europe? II

• Primary reasons to lead a proposal– Protect “OMII” brand– We were expected to do it– If we didn’t do it someone else would have– Addresses sustainability of institute through diversity

of funding sources• Primary reasons why NOT to LEAD a proposal

– Want money to do our own interesting research


Prerequisites before starting to preparing an EU bid

• 1: Find the right EU call (cordis.europa.eu) and read the call, rules, requirements– Requirements include specifying:

• Closing Date• Composition of Consortium (Number of partners and which

member states)• Instruments available (the format needed for the proposal)

• 2: Go to Brussels to talk to the relevant unit head/s to find explore a proposed call– More subtle requirements

• Approximate budget available/suggested• Which institutions to include/exclude• Tone of proposal• Level of competition


Before writing a proposal…

• Meet with prospective partners to:– Understand what they want to do – but don’t agree! – Get commitment from them to help and not compete– Describe the level of budget available and their share– Ensure they understand the EU rules as this impacts

what partners can do:• In FP6 research activities are 50% funded. (1:1)• In FP7 this is 75%. (3:1)

• Sketch an outline proposal that conforms to the EU instrument, identifying partners to activities and partner funding


Outline proposal…

• The outline proposal for OMII-Europe was not exactly as first thought:– The Instrument dictates certain tasks in the proposal

• I3 (Integrated Infrastructure Initiatives) muct include Network Activities, Service Activities and Joint Research Activities

– Politics dictates inclusion of certain partners– The proposal has to be written to fit partners not the

other way around• => You can shape a proposal but you can’t dictate it


The full bid

• Preparing the Bid:– Admin part (takes a lot longer than you would expect)– “Part B” or the “Description of Work”

• Approx 100 – 150 pages of text conforming to template describing what will be done

• All partners must sign this off

• Takes approximately 3 months of pretty much full-time work

• After closing date ~ 2 months to hear if proposal is shortlisted– => proposal is fundable

• Hearings ~ 6 weeks thereafter to rank fundable proposals• Outcome ~ 6 weeks later


Before you start…

• Negotiations with commission– Take at least 3 months– Could cut budget and insist on changes to proposal

(not technical)– Need to complete a “consortium agreement” – allow at

least 3 months• Total time from submission to start is approx 8

months to 1 year


The good and bad news

• Good News:– Finance department is experienced and very helpful in managing

finances of EU grants– Plenty of other people who can help– Gives you plenty of time to get a good project manager in place!– After you lead one project you make a name for yourself and get

invited to participate in others– Good news for individual researchers employed on project –

travel, salary, etc...• Bad News:

– Large administrative overhead with little resource– The admin costs are lumped with your research costs so to

achieve balance you forfeit some research funding


Impact of EU funding on OMII-Europe

• Emphasis changed from “Reuse, Reengineer and Integrate” grid components to “Interoperability and Quality Assurance of grid components” due to partner contributions

• The partner list resulted in grid components and grid middleware distributions being included that were not initially considered

• The Instrument for submitting the proposal required the inclusion of tasks that were not foreseen


An Overview of the OMII-Europe project

• EU funded FP6 project (RI)– Starting May 2006, initial 2 year duration– 16 partners (8 European, 4 USA, 4 Chinese)

• Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute for Europe– Complimentary to existing national programmes

(OMII-UK, NMI, C-OMEGA, OMII-China…)• Goal is to provide key software components for

building e-infrastructures• Project will demonstrate “proof of concept” with

expectation for a follow-on project in FP7


What will OMII-Europe do?

• Initial focus on providing common interfaces and integration of major Grid software infrastructures

• Common services:– Database Access, Virtual Organisation Management, Portal,

Accounting, Job Submission and Job Monitoring• These represent many of the outputs from the standards

function groups

– Capability to add additional services– Emphasis on porting and re-engineering work, not developing

from scratch• Infrastructure integration

– Initial EGEE/UNICORE/Globus interoperability– Interoperable security framework


OMII-Europe guiding principles

• Committed to standards process– Implementing agreed open standards and working with

standards process (GGF/Oasis)• Quality Assurance

– Published methodology and compliance test– All software components have public QA process and audit trail– Working with similar projects and organisations to agree policies

• Impartiality– OMII-Europe is “honest broker” providing impartial

advice/information on e-infrastructures


What will OMII-Europe deliver?

• Repository of open-source, quality assured software services for gLite/EGEE, Globus, UNICORE and CROWNgrid– Some services bundled with major grid distributions– Initial integration work with EGEE, UNICORE and

Globus• Public reports on grid infrastructures

– Initial benchmark results– Impartial advice and information

• Evaluation infrastructure to “test” services– User support and training for services


Who benefits from OMII-Europe?• E-infrastructure providers

– Choice of grid software to deploy can be determined by selecting the most appropriate system to manage resources.

– Achieved through common interfaces and interoperability of grid systems• Decisions not constrained by membership of a particular VO • Not required to deploy and manage multiple grid distributions

• E-science users– Common methods for accessing grid Infrastructures– Access to resources beyond the immediate e-infrastructure running a

specific grid distribution• Achieved through low level interoperability of Grid distributions

– Users not restricted to a specific, fixed set of resources• E-science application developers

– Applications can be deployed and run on multiple grid environments through adherence to common services

• Not required to develop different solutions for different grids


Why Globus, UNICORE, gLite and CROWN?

• Minimal significant set:– gLite is a complete set of middleware developed within EGEE and

is deployed to create a grid containing more than 150 sites and 30 countries

– UNICORE is a major EU and national middleware initiative and is deployed at many supercomputer sites, in particular those available through DEISA

– Globus is the world-leading open-source platform for Grid computing developed within the USA and is used for many research projects world-wide

– All three grid platforms have significant user bodies within Europe– CROWNgrid is the middleware used on the major Chinese grid

infrastructure


Database Service

• Implementation of the OGSA-DAI specification from the DAIS-WG within the Data function group of GGF– OGSA-DAI service federates data resources with different

support mechanisms (Relational/XML Databases/flat files) allowing uniform access across these resources

• Number of other data specifications emerging that may be considered later.– transaction management; byte IO; Grid file systems etc

• DAIS implementation already available for Globus 4 – • Work is to port to UNICORE and gLite – Alpha releases

scheduled for May 2007. – Evaluating OGSADai4UnicoreGS


Job Submit and Job Monitoring Service

• Implementation of the JSDL (job submission description language) and BES (Basic execution service) specifications from the Compute working group at GGF– Common way to specify and control jobs (abstraction of O/S and

cluster controller)• Other specifications such as scheduling, but above are

essential and well developed with implementations• Work is to make BES and JSDL available on Globus, UNICORE

and gLite– Initial version for UNICORE available in May 2007– JSDL translator (using XSLT) for gLite in testing


Virtual Organisation Management Service

• Authorisation service available for Globus and gLite. – Provides information on the user's relationship with

Virtual Organization: groups, roles and capabilities • Work to make VOMS available under UNICORE and

to extend VOMS with SAML support– SAML (Security Authorisation Markup Language) from

OASIS Technical Committee. (standard for XML exchanging authentication and authorisation data between security domains)

– Alpha version for UNICORE with SAML support scheduled for May 2007


Accounting Service

• Implementation of the Resource Usage Service (RUS) from the management working group within GGF– Tracks use of resources (accounting in traditional

UNIX sense), but not concerned with payment – Closely related to Usage Record (UG-WG) within GGF

• Specification available for public comment• Alpha version of RUS (or equivalent) available in May

2007 for Globus, gLite and UNICORE


Portal Service

• Integration of the Gridsphere portal framework with Globus, UNICORE and gLite and provide portlets for job submit, accounting, etc…– Provide application level portability at a portlet level– Portlets available for main OMII-Europe services


Additional Services

• Current solution:

• Chinese partners will make all services available on Chinese CROWNgrid infrastructure

• In May 2007, launch of the second round of service integration


OMII-Europe JRA1 re-engineering activities

OGSA DAI BES VOMS RUSGrid

Sphere

Etc. Identified

Components

EGEE

(GLite)

UNICORE

Globus

Etc. OMII-UK, USA, China


OMII-Europe Infrastructure Integration

• This activity goes beyond the adoption of common services and focuses on full grid infrastructure integration through employing:– A common security infrastructure

• Much similarity (X509) and differences (handling of proxies, authorisation, anonymity and auditing)

• Intention to define a common security base• Provide a strengthened form of X509 credential management

through using Myproxy

– job migration between Globus/gLite/UNICORE• Builds on Globus/UNICORE Grip project

• Close collaboration with GGF GIN WG


Project Structure and Effort Allocation

• Networking activities– Management, Outreach, Training– 8% Person Effort

• Service Activities– Repository, QA, Support– 25% Person Effort

• Joint Research Activities– Re-engineering, new services, integration,

benchmarking– 67% Person Effort


Effort (Person Years) per Activity

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

NA1: M

anag

e.

NA2: O

utre

ach

NA3: T

raini

ng

SA1: R

epos

it.

SA2: Q

uality

A.

SA3: S

uppo

rt

JRA1:

Dat

abas

e

JRA1:

VOM

S

JRA1:

Acc

ount

.

JRA1:

Job

Sub.

JRA1:

Por

tal

JRA1:

Com

p. E

x.

JRA2:

New

Ser

v.

JRA3:

Sec

urity

JRA3:

Inf.

Inte

g.

JRA4:

Ben

ch.

Funded Effort (Years) Unfunded Effort (Years)


OMII-Europe Project Partners

114 person years over 2 years, 5 million Euro, 4 major Grid infrastructures

University of Southampton UK (coordinator) University of Chicago USA

Fujitsu Laboratories Europe UK NCSA, University of Illinois USA

Forschungszentrum Juelich Germany University of Southern California Los Angeles USA

Kungl Tekniska Högskolan Sweden University of Wisconsin-Madison USA

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare Italy Beihang University China

Poznan Supercomputing & Networking Center Poland

China Institute of Computing Technology Beijing China

University of Edinburgh UK Computer Network Information Centre Beijing China

CERN, European Organisation for Nuclear Research Switzerland

Tsinghua University China


OMII-Europe project summary

• Interoperability is difficult not because of technical issues but because it requires agreement– No one wants to be seen to “lose out” to someone else

• OMII-Europe has support from the major grid Infrastructure providers to deliver interoperability– No point to be trying to solve the problem without vendor support

• OMII-Europe’s emphasis on standards provides a non-biased approach towards interoperability– An open independent process needs to be used to arrive at

technical decisions• Achieving interoperability is a long term goal, don’t try and eat

an elephant in one go!– OMII-Europe will improve overall USABILITY of grid

Infrastructures and improve INTEROPERABILITY of grid infrastructures over the next two years


Concluding Comments

• EU research budget is moving towards 2% of total EU GDP.

• Getting a share isn’t that difficult but you need to be politically aware

• It provides a means to support real collaborative research within the EU

• Participating is far easier than being coordinating partner

the omii-europe project and the impact of european union funding

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