European Grid Infrastructure

EGEE ( Enabling Grids for E-Science ) is a by the Directorate -F in the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union -funded Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures project. It connects 2008-2010 in its third phase, more than 260 institutions in 55 countries to create a research Grid infrastructure for the European Research Area.

Scientists from research, teaching and industrial users is the access to large computing and storage - regardless of the geographical of use - offered. Current research in the field grid technologies are used for the development of a service Grid infrastructure which is provided 24 hours a day. With funding of over 30 million Euro each phase, the EGEE project one of the most expensive of its kind is The EGEE project is also focused on gaining a lot of new users.

On the following areas, the main focus of the project:

Background

EGEE began in April 2004 under the name of the Enabling Grids for E -science in Europe and shortly thereafter changed its name to the Enabling Grids for E- sciencE after partners from the U.S. and Southeast Asia had joined the project.

Starting point for EGEE was the existing LHC Computing Grid ( LCG). The aim of LCG is the creation of resources for the expected amount of data from the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC) at CERN, Geneva. LCG combines high-energy physics computing nodes around the world to cope with the data produced by the LHC set of predicted 15 petabytes per year can. From LCG starting EGEE started to put together other resources from around the world and above all other user groups and applications to the largest multi-disciplinary production Grid.

Middleware

EGEE began its work based on the LCG -2 middleware of the LCG project. This in turn was based on the developments of the previous project EGEE DataGrid. At the same time began with the development of gLite and to use different sources. gLite is a lightweight middleware that provides all grid - based services.

In March 2009, gLite has reached version 3.2 and now consists of several hundred software packages, which are grouped into logical modules installation.

The gLite middleware is also used by a number of groups outside of EGEE, such as the EU funded project DILLIGENT. The French space agency CNES, plans to make the use of gLite.

The gLite middleware was designed for GNU / Linux on the i386 architecture. The recommended distribution is Scientific Linux, but it is widely operated under other RHEL -compatible distros (eg CentOS ). The main development branch of the middleware is now provided for operation under Scientific Linux 5 x86_64, Debian GNU / Linux 4. With few exceptions, the most important components of this version are already certified for operation (as of March 2010). The remaining components are in port.

Infrastructure

EGEE now operates nearly 25 data centers, research centers, universities, companies and other interested participants. Were originally found only in Europe this, so there are now nodes in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. The grid nodes in the EGEE now represent approximately 110,000 CPU cores.

What does the future hold?

EGEE project ended up being in March 2006. On 1 April 2006, the EU follow-up project EGEE II, which ran until the end of April 2008 started. Since 1 May 2008, the two-year follow-up project EGEE - III is running.

EGEE II led the results of EGEE on. EGEE was planned as the first two-year phase of a four-year program to provide a grid infrastructure in production quality for the European research landscape and beyond. Scientists in academia and industry are already benefiting from the EGEE e - infrastructure that supports many applications from various scientific disciplines around the clock at the same time. It allows the use of a common resource pool, regardless of geographical location with access to significant storage, computing and network facilities. The EGEE II project advanced this infrastructure significantly and consolidated them. It binds a national, regional and thematic Grid initiatives and works with other Grids around the world. The results from the global infrastructure high capacity far exceeds the capacity of local clusters and individual centers. Resulting in a single tool for collaborative computer- intensive science ( " e-Science "). EGEE II also expanded the portfolio of supported applications to more than 15 disciplines and this number is constantly increasing.

EGEE III is the logical successor EGEE II and has as a target. Propagation of the infrastructure and applications, as well as the creation of a sustainable European grid infrastructure