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SCARF / National Grid Service Users Tutorial

→ Europe/Zurich
room CR08, RAL

room CR08, RAL
Duncan Tooke, Mike Mineter
Description

Grid computing empowers collaborations across different institutions by enabling them to share resources of data and computation. Current developments using grid computing are across a wide spectrum of research ('e-Research'), engineering, public service, provision of digital libraries.

The National Grid Service (NGS) is the core UK grid service resulting from the UK's e-Science program. It is intended for the production use of computational and data grid resources for scientific and academic research purposes. Use of the NGS is available to members of the UK academic and scientific communities. Projects involving large data volumes, high computation requirements or geographically widespread collaborators may benefit from using the NGS.

The goals of this course are to give participants:

  • An understanding of the concepts of Grid Computing and e-Research.
  • An orientation to the use of SCARF
  • An orientation to the NGS and the Grid Operations Support Centre (http://www.grid-support.ac.uk/).
  • Sufficient practical experience to allow initial use of the National Grid Service and SCARF in future.

The course is presented jointly by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the training team of the National e-Science Centre. Registration is by email to Duncan Tooke, D.M.Tooke@rl.ac.uk. Laptops will be required for the practicals.
  • Monday, 24 April
    • Day 1: Grid Concepts and using the National Grid Service
      • 1
        Welcome and Overview of the Tutorial
      • 2
        What is Grid Computing?
        Speaker: Mike Mineter
        transparencies
      • 3
        Introduction to SCARF
      • 4
        The National Grid Service
        The NGS is described including its organisation, middleware, and procedures for gaining an account.
        Speaker: Guy Warner
        transparencies
      • 5
        e-Visualisation: The Power of the Grid
        To demonstrate the true power of the Grid, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's e-Visualisation group will demonstrate software currently running in a production environment.
        Speaker: Lakshmi Sastry
      • 11:10
        Tea / Coffee
      • 6
        Gaining Access to the NGS
        An overview of security, authentication and authorisation on the NGS. Practical: using certificates on the National Grid Service.
        Speaker: Mike Mineter
        more information
        transparencies
      • 7
        Creating and Running an Application on the NGS
        Speaker: Guy Warner
        misc
        more information
      • 13:00
        Lunch
      • 8
        Creating and Running an Application on the NGS continued
      • 9
        Graphical Access to the NGS for All
        Speaker: David Spence (RAL)
        transparencies
      • 15:35
        Tea / Coffee
      • 10
        Making life easier for users: MyProxy and Portals
        An introduction to the MyProxy service followed by a short practical. The P-GRADE portal is also described. Developed by SZTAKI, Hungary and adapted for use on the NGS by the University of Westminster, this is an option for deploying legacy applications on grids.
        more information
        transparencies
      • 11
        Storage Resource Broker on the NGS
        A brief introduction to the SRB. Developed by San Diego Supercomputing Center, the SRB permits data files held in different NGS sites to be perceived as one virtual filesystem.
        more information
        transparencies
  • Tuesday, 25 April
    • Day 2 morning: Programming on the National Grid Service
      • 12
        Overview of Day 2
      • 13
        NGS Computation Services: API's and Parallel Jobs
        A brief talk followed by a practical to illustrate some of the options for creating applications to run on the NGS.
        Speaker: Mike Mineter
        more information
        transparencies
      • 11:00
        Coffee
      • 14
        Data services on the National Grid Service
        An overview is given of the data services on the NGS: SRB, OGSA-DAI, GridFTP.
        transparencies
      • 15
        The ORACLE Service
        Speaker: Gordon Brown
        transparencies
      • 16
        OGSA-DAI: data access and integration
        Speaker: Guy Warner
        misc
        more information
        transparencies
      • 17
        GridFTP
        Speaker: Guy Warner
        transparencies
      • 13:05
        Lunch
    • Day 2: Afternoon - A look to the future
      • 18
        An introduction to Web Services, Grids and WS-RF
        Speaker: Mike Mineter
        transparencies
      • 19
        Next steps
        How to obtain a UK e-science certificate and how to gain access to the NGS.
        Speaker: Guy Warner
        transparencies
      • 15:15
        Tea / Coffee room CR08, RAL

        room CR08, RAL
      • 20
        NGS and emerging middleware
        The "e-Infrastructure ecosystem" of the UK is described, with reference to the international EGEE grid, GridPP, OMII-UK and JISC initiatives. The options for future deployment by the NGS are outlined.
        Speaker: Mike Mineter
        transparencies
      • 21
        Discussion
  • Wednesday, 26 April
    • Day 3: using SCARF
      • 10:00
        Tea / Coffee
      • 22
        Introduction and overview
        Speaker: Peter Oliver
      • 23
        SCARF - the last 6 months
        Speaker: Duncan Tooke
      • 24
        Grid switchover - reasons, practicalities and the future
        Speaker: Duncan Tooke
      • 25
        Discussion session
      • 12:00
        Buffet lunch
      • 26
        Getting the most from SCARF
        Speaker: Duncan Tooke
      • 27
        Upcoming developments and the SCARF roadmap
        Speaker: Duncan Tooke
      • 28
        Discussion session with coffee
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