The UK National Grid Service Using the NGS

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The UK National Grid ServiceUsing the NGS
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Outline

• NGS Background
• Getting Certificates
• Acceptable usage policies
• Joining VOs
• What resources will be available to the users
  when they sign up
• Submitting jobs moving data etc.

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The NGS

• A Production Quality Grid
• (Background)

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A Brief History of Time

• 2001 - UK e-Science Grid
• GridPP and others start
• 2003 - Initial grid service ITT
• 4 independent clusters to investigate provision
  of a grid service
• April 2004 - NGS pre-production service
• EGEE, GridPP-2
• August 2004 GOSC proposed
• Coordinating NGS and providing central services
• September 2004 - NGS production service / GOSC
• April 2006 NGS/GOSC phase 1 review
• May 2006 - NGS phase-2 approved
• More integrated programme
• EGEE-2 started in April
• October 2006 NGS phase-2

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The Mission of the NGS

• The Mission of the National Grid Service
• To provide coherent electronic access for UK
  researchers to all computational and data based
  resources and facilities required to carry out
  their research, independent of resource or
  researcher location

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Key Themes

• Provide the users what they need with as low an
  additional barrier as possible.
• As if by magic give them access to much more.
• Content
• Services data, computation, ...
• NGS will only grow if the content grows
• Not the job of 1 person or organisation
• Job of everyone

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NGS

• Is the largest National Grid Initiative outside
  US
• Is 1-2 years ahead of other NGIs
• Has the largest grid PKI infrastructure
• Best integration of Grid and HPC
• Is known worldwide
• Has real users !
• Knows what the next steps are ...

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NGS Status

• Approx 500 registered users
• 11 Sites (Core/Partners/Affiliates)
• Predominantly focussed on compute and storage at
  present
• Limited data sets available

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Using the NGS
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Getting Certificates

• Starting point for getting certificates,
  including user documentation etc.
• http//www.grid-support.ac.uk/ca
• Interface of CA Service (for reference)
• https//ca.grid-support.ac.uk/

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Access to NGS

• Evolving models
• Several agendas
• Encourage new users, support collaborative
  activities, enable research
• How do users get access
• Lightweight peer review (e-science certificate)
• Individual users -gt projects (we support VOs !!)
• What do users get
• Access to resources (that they are authorised to
  use or pay for)
• Access to core services
• free allocations on core nodes (and some
  partners)
• Time limited allocations
• No guarantees beyond each re-application - best
  efforts
• Opportunity to build a collaboration/case/support
• Many users news to the game, e.g. students

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Acceptable Use Policies

• NGS currently has its Terms and Conditions of Use
  that all users have to accept
• http//www.ngs.ac.uk/NGS-tacu.html
• We are looking towards adopting the simple VO
  Policies of EGEE/LCG/GridPP/ (something common)
  for VOs that we host and support on our VOMS
  infrastructure.
• For support of external VOs, if we accept the
  VO, then the VO Manager has to accept our TACU,
  but not each individual member.

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Joining

• You can join the NGS as
• A single user
• A VO (externally hosted, or hosted by the NGS)
• A Project accessing NGS resources via own
  infrastructure and where NGS sees only a single
  user e.g. BRIDGES project
• OR as A Resource Provider
• See http//www.ngs.ac.uk/access.html

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Resources Available
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NGS Partners, 2007
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Resources available to users

• National HPC services
• HPCx
• HeCToR (expected 2007)
• Must apply separately to Research Councils

• NGS core nodes
• Linux IA32 clusters
• data nodes at RAL and Manchester
• each 15 TB, 40 processors
• 128p compute nodes at Oxford and Leeds
• PHASE 2 NOW BEING INSTALLED!
• free at point of use
• apply through NGS web site
• 500 registered users
• accept conditions of use
• light-weight peer review
• 1-2 weeks
• access is through digital X.509 certificates
• from UK e-Science CA
• or recognized peer

• NGS partner sites
• Compute nodes at Bristol and Cardiff, Lancaster,
  Westminster
• Access as per NGS core nodes
• Belfast
• NGS affiliates
• NeSC
• User access at discretion of affiliate

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NGS-2 Hardware

• Compute Nodes
• 48 nodes with Dual Socket Dual Core AMD Opteron
  280 processors, 8GB memory 2x80GB disks, Myrinet
  2000
• 8 nodes with Quad Socket Dual Core AMD Opteron
  280 processors, 32GB memory 2x80GB disks, Myrinet
  2000
• Storage
• 8 storage nodes Dual Socket Dual Core AMD Opteron
  280 processors, 8GB memory 2x80GB disks, Myrinet
  2000, Fibre HBA
• 5 x 12 TB Infotrend Storage Arrays
• Qlogic 5200 SANbox
• Initial BenchMarks
• Initial testing using HPL (top 500 gigaflops
  tester) on 240 Cores gives 934Gflops (81 peak).
  The full system should have 256 Cores available
  but some nodes have hardware problems

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UK e
-
Infrastructure
get common access, tools, information,
Users
Nationally supported services, through NGS
HPCx

HECtoR
Regional and
Campus grids
Community Grids
Integrated
internationally
LHC
VRE, VLE, IE
ISIS TS2
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Doing Work on the NGS
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Access Mechanisms

• Direct gsissh login
• Globus tools
• Portals
• Resource Brokers / UI machines
• AHE (Application Hosting Environment)
• GridSAM
• .your own application

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GSI-SSHhttp//www.ngs.ac.uk (Grid Utilities)
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Globus Toolkit
See NGS website for tutorials and information on
installing client versions www.ngs.ac.uk
(Documentation)
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Portals
NGS Applications Repository (https//portal.ngs.ac
.uk)
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Portals
https//gngs-portal.cpc.wmin.ac.uk8080/gridsphere
/gridsphere
Community Supported Portals e.g. University of
Westminster NGS P-Grade Portal
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Resource Brokerhttp//www.ngs.ac.uk(Other
Services/Resource Broker)

• EGEE gLite RB ( UI)
• The NGS Resource Broker and User Interface is
  based on the gLite 3.0 WMS-LB and UI nodes from
  the EGEE Project. The UI is accessible to all
  members of the NGS by GSISSH on port 2222 at the
  following nodengsui01.ngs.rl.ac.uk
• Gridway
• http//asds.dacya.ucm.es/GridWay/
• Metascheduling technologies for the grid

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Community Services

• Have a service or application that other NGS
  users can use?
• Advertise it on the NGS wiki
• http//wiki.ngs.ac.uk
• based on GridSite MediaWiki
• anyone with a UK e-Science certficate can
  register and post

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Further Support
Any Comments or questions or feedback on what you
want is always welcome

• http//www.ngs.ac.uk
• Email support_at_grid-support.ac.uk
• User Forum June 19th-20th Oxford