Gridcast from the EGEE Users Forum

So long, Manchester...

2007-05-12T03:44:00.001-07:00

We just left Manchester yesterday morning. The travel was OK and now I'm sitting in front of my computer at Madrid, rewinding all this week's feelings.

The “Manchester Multicultural Workshop” was a success! Countries represented were Spain, Italy and Poland. We started at the “Grand Central” Pub where we could enjoy some live music (Britt-heavy metal, actually).

Then we moved to the “Fab Cafe”... yes, the one that was visited the night before and I couldn't remember the name written on the door (too long). I strongly recommend to visit its website. This bar is what a Sci-Fi maniac deserves! There you'll find Star Trek's ships models, gadgets from the Dr. Who series, even an “Outrun” arcade! It's so... “retromodern”.

When the “Fab Cafe” closed, we moved to “Charlie's”, which is a nearby disco. There we could enjoy some great House music sessions. We were lucky with the live music in general that night and, we were very lucky to have the opportunity to meet all our “Grid-friends” and make new ones. As it always happens in this kind of events, new collaboration proposals were made that night (“Ideas Exchange is not being made only in the Exchange Rooms”). Let's see how they evolve in the future!

Now it's time for me to thank all the people from the event for being themselves: FANTASTIC. I would like to thank specially Massimo Lamanna for the organization and support, and Rosy Mondardini for considering me for the GridCast initiative this week (Grazie di cuore!). Of course, my thanks go also to you, my readers. I hope you have enjoyed reading my GridCast entries as that was my commitment.

Well, that's all, I really hope to meet you all as soon as possible. Manchester was great... really great!

P.D. I'll post all the photos I took this week in the Gallery Section of my website. This is going to happen in two weeks or so, as I'm going to Rio de Janeiro for the CCGrid'07 Conference, so please be patient.

If you want to read all my GridCasts for this event, click here.

GIIS: Rafael Mayo

2007-05-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

EELA Applications Manager.

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

A good opportunity to share not only resources, but knowledge.

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

A common way of work.

GIIS: Harald Kornmayer

2007-05-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

I'm acting on both sides: As a scientist the Grid is the perfect tool to solve my scientific problem as the Grid enables collaboration.

As a tool developer (project lead of the g-Eclipse project, www.geclipse.eu) I want to lower the threshold for user to enter the Grid.

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

The vision of the seamless access to resources of a scientific collaboration was the dream for me as a young scientist. The Grid is the tool I wanted to have when I started with science. As still some big obstacles are on the road to reach this vision, the Grid is very complex.

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

The Grid will be the infrastructure to enable science in the future. That would be enough to have a big impact in society, even without involvement of industry. Such an infrastructure will be the base for a further development of human knowledge.

Sessions, visits and Rock n' Roll

2007-05-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday night we had great time both at the Globus Party and the “First Manchester Italian-Spanish Summit”. This last event took place at Indian Restaurant called “Ashoka” at Portland Street. Dishes are great, exotic and they will surely satisfy you. The plan was to go to pubs/clubs later. The recommendation this time is the club near the restaurant (“This ain't a TV...”-something). It closed nearly at 3.00 am and people there were very friendly.
And today... the codename for me was: “Workflow Session”. I performed a talk about the Fusion Physics application we ported using GridWay (MARATRA: MAssive RAy TRAcing is not a prototype anymore, now it's at production state). I was very satisfied with the feedback given by the public.

Also my colleague Antonio Juan had a talk in that session. In his case, it was about using GridWay for virtualization. He explained how a real life problem (European Space Agency satellite image processing) was solved using this solution and gave experimental results of overheads given by different approaches inside virtualization. Gongratuations, Antonio juan.

The lunch program was to visit the Manchester processor farm. It was a nice visit and we lunched there nearby the machines. Technology, good food and nice chat. What else can be needed?

Even if the day has not finished yet... here we launch a CFP (Call For Participation) for a MMW (Manchester Multicultural Workshop). We'll meet at Palace Manchester Hotel (Oxford Street, remember) at 22.00 zulu. As we'll leave tomorrow morning... Hope to see you there!

Meeting People....

2007-05-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

Having arrived late (yesterday afternoon) at the ODF and EGEE User Forum I still haven't been to many presentation, instead I have a had very productive time meeting people outside the sessions.

These have included discussions about the possible future work and funding of the Real Time Monitor (RTM) that we have written at Imperial College London. This is one of the most widely used dissemination tools and has, in various forms, been used to explain the operation of the Grid to thousands of people at different conferences around the world, including such dignitaries as the King of Spain and the President of India. The RTM can be downloaded from http://gridportal.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk/rtm/. However, despite being so widely used this has fallen between the funding initiative of the UK funding council (the GridPP reviewers thought that it should be funded through PPARC dissemination and PPARC dissemination reviewers thought that it should be funded as part of GridPP) Bastards... So now we are looking at the possibility of funding through EGEE III.

Through the RTM we have collected job trajectories of some twenty millions jobs and another discsussion has been about these data can be incorporated into the Grid Obversatory. The Grid Observatory is an attempt to perform good computer science on the EGEE.

Other discussions have been around a variety of projects in which we are involved or would like to be involved. To me, the real purpose of these meetings is as much to gather people together to meet each other outside the sessions as it is to view the presentations.

Data Management in the grid

2007-05-10T05:28:00.000-07:00

This morning I attended the data management session. It seems that most communities have the same problems- how do I get my data consistently on the grid without bothering about all the details of EGEE, how do I discover my data, once it is on the grid and how do I control access. Concerning the metadata, AMGA seems to be a prominent solution.
The presentation I enjoyed most, was the last one of the morning session, the one about gdse. They are making existing databases accessible in EGEE by integrating them as so called "Query elements", basically another type of CE. I really liked the idea of this deep integration of databases into EGEE.

GIIS: Miguel Cárdenas

2007-05-10T02:42:00.000-07:00

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

When I think which my present role in my organization is, I arrive to the conclusion that I am a cover-hole man for all issues: from to write (with a lot of colleagues) a FP7 project, to prospect new applications or new candidates to the positions of the center, passing by to organize public event or to install new computer for a project.

I am a practice man, I like the theoretical work and the practical issued to feel myself alive. Besides I try to cover the skill don't fulfilled by my colleagues to achieve a coherent group.

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

Firstly it is way and the reason for communicate with a lot of people around the world. And that communication produces a wonderful and powerful infrastructure that should be easy the way to produce advances in the science and the technology. One of the most interesting features of the grid is that bring together the called big sciences with other disciplines that traditionally didn't have an access to big computational resources.

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

A vehicle.

A vehicle to improve the way to produce science and technology in all country around the world. Them these improvements arrive to the peoples living anywhere.

Also a vehicle to communicate with other persons, to learn from them and from their culture, improving the relationships between the countries.

GIIS: Ignacio M. Llorente

2007-05-10T02:16:00.000-07:00

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

I am leading several grid technology projects, such as GridWay, Grid4Utility or GridHypervisor.

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

Grid is the technology supporting the adaptive service-oriented infrastructures that fulfill the demands of critical scientific and business processes.

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

Benefits and not features, I would like the rest of the world to experience the substantial benefits of the grid technology.

The business of grids

2007-05-10T01:41:00.000-07:00

I spent most of yesterday on our stand. We're part of a new research council, the Science and Technology Funding Council, and it's good to share a stand with our new colleagues. The exhibition is fairly busy, though not massively so, but we had some really good discussions.

As usual with GridPP stands, we're showing the latest version Real Time Monitor developed by Imperial College. The monitor has really escaped our clutches now, with lots of people in EGEE and LCG using it too. So, a successful result for dissemination - but we'll have to work on it so we have something new for the next conference!

I spent time talking to a representative from Fujitsu about the security constraints on businesses using grids. He explained how a company usually has an all or nothing approach to cluster security - either you're trusted, and can access all their resources, or you're not and can access nothing. Not like in a science grid such as EGEE, where the system of VOs gives people access to some resources and not others, down to individual files if necessary. It will be interesting to see if security in industry develops down the same lines.

In the evening I had dinner with people from the EGEE project and a technology transfer officer from the UK. They were talking about the possibilities for commercial work with gLite. EGEE is scientific and not for profit, and will remain so, but there seem to be interesting opportunities for spin-off companies around the edges. It would be great if we could get some our more business-oriented people interested in this, and maybe discourage them from leaving for pots of money in the city.

Let the EGEE 2nd User Forum begin!

2007-05-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

3... 2... 1... and the EGEE 2^nd User Forum has begun!

In particular, I was at two sessions: gLite and GIN.

For the gLite one, I found really interesting all the new possibilities that are being considered, specially for the execution services. On the other hand, I believe that the efforts performed by GIN (Grid Interaction Now) are great. The Grid concept has being adopted in different countries and even if the philosophies are similar, the Grid middleware employed is not always compatible. So, if we are talking in building the greatest computer ever in the World, why don't we start uniting Grid infrastructures?

By the way, lunch was very exotic, judge by yourself!

Also, this was a special day for my colleague Tino. He performed his first speech in a conference during the GIN Session. He talked about using GridWay for providing interoperability between all of these infrastructures. I think he was awesome! He explained all the concepts well and was able to answer all the given questions. Congratulations, Tino!

And tonight... The Globus Party! And after that, we are going to perform a Italian-Spanish joint convention. Yes, I'm half Italian and half Spanish, and it's always my objective to unite people from my origins. Of course, people form other countries are invited (21 o'clock in front of the Manchester Central entrance). The expected plan is to dinner together and have some Manchester's traditional drink. Hope to see you there!

People Bite Back – Sociology of the Grid?

2007-05-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

I spent much of the day talking with people and catching up (if I am to study the 'social' side of Grids it seems important to be social), but did see a couple of things that hint at how Grids might be shaped by people. One was a set of presentations on use of Grids in health in Exchange room 1. Here, a speaker (I didn’t catch his name) stated that “Easily the biggest challenge is the human factor”. While we aspire to create sharing mediated by grids, people don’t like sharing. Pawel Plaszcza of GridwiseTech made a similar point later on, discussing why data cannot necessarily leave one hospital, because it was expensive to create, came from years of medical practice, people want credit for their work (and cannot control that once it leaves), and has legal constraints on its leaving the country. Data is clearly not just data devoid of context.

BEinGrid (or perhaps BeingRid?), at stand 15 are producing a set of case studies on the use of Grids in Business, one of which is about supporting online gaming. In their presentation this afternoon they pointed out that people play games when not at work, so server providers might share servers between business and gaming. Just as data is socially influenced, in some contexts, load on this grid is also shaped by the working practices of users. Just as the National Power Grid is influenced by the time of advert breaks in soap operas so Grid demand is shaped by the working practices of its users – if only because people don’t submit jobs at 2am as much as at 10am!

As a parting thought, on the train up here I read an article about NASA*. It is sobering to know that currently somewhere between 20% and 55% of NASA employees are about to retire - If the “space age” has grown old and been pensioned off – where next?

* Lee, Simmons & Drueen (2005) “Knowledge sharing in practice; applied storytelling and knowledge communities at NASA” Int, J of Knowledge and Learning 1(2).

GIIS: Charles Loomis

2007-05-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

A former physicist who's trying to get more scientists to use grid technology to make it easier to use.

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

A platform that promises to make access to resources more transparent and to allow easier sharing of data and algorithms for users.

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

A global platform that is as ubiquitous as the web is today and allows anyone to share their data *and* resources. When we see people store their data and write their results to the grid by default, the grid will be a success.

Food and freebies

2007-05-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm Sarah Pearce, and I work for GridPP, the UK particle physics Grid. I arrived in Manchester on Monday to set up our stand in the exhibition hall. The advantage of getting here early meant that we could take, well, perhaps a little more than our allocated space on the UK e-science stand. Sadly, we were put back in our box - but the stand still looks great.
Mainly thanks to our research council events staff, for driving hours on a bank holiday to bring our masses of equipment - 3 large screens, 3 small screens, 6 computers, 4 backdrop stands...

Also, our freebies turned up, which was exciting. Come to the GridPP stand for free pens and mints!

This being Manchester, imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning to find it was raining. Sadly (idiotically) I failed to bring an umbrella - but at least I brought a coat, which is more than some people managed. Last week everyone was saying how sunny it had been in the UK for months. Bah.

So, yesterday I was all day in an NA2 meeting - a gathering of lots of the communications people from across EGEE. A long meeting, but interesting - we discussed what freebies people like, the difficulties of translation and brainstormed how best to attract industry to the Grid. Then we all went for a curry - I haven't had decent Indian food for a long time, so that was one of the highlights of my conference...

2007-05-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Hi there,
I actually already arrive yesterday but had a lot to do with setting up the demo we are presenting here.

But, let me first introduce myself. I am Kerstin Ronneberger, originally a physist, then changed to climate science, and now to EGEE to support climate scientists to use the grid.

So far, I mainly saw the poster and demo area, which is nice and large, with many tables and lots of space for chatting and discussion. Even though the official demo session did not even start yet, there is already great interest and a lot of discussion, which is really nice. To me the atmosphere seems very open, with pleasant and interested people.

So much for the moment, more later :-)

GIIS: Javier López

2007-05-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

We are developers of accounting and monitoring facilities for EGEE as well as administrators of our grid systems.

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

A lot of computers from different sites of different countries working together as one only system.

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

For some another computing facility that they can use in demand and for others an easy way to share their resources.

Demo stands

2007-05-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

I was just having a quick look to the demo stands and the EGEE stand is showing a quite sofisticasted and interesting video and also I saw big interest and many persons having a look to the Dashboard stand explained by Pablo Saiz

GIIS: Emir Imamagic

2007-05-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

I'm working as a system architect for a national grid initiative. Within this activity I spend most of my time on gluing various pieces of existing middleware. Also, I'm involved in EGEE project where I work on providing monitoring infrastructure and administering grid sites.

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

Grid is a general distributed environment that enables easier access to worldwide resources to all sorts of users: application developers, resource providers, end users, etc. For me as an engineer grid will always be stack of middleware services which need to provide specific functionality in order for the whole thing to work.

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

For the rest of the world grid should one day become ubiquitous infrastructure just as many others (e.g. computer networks, electricity, gas, etc.). Also, I expect the solution to come not only from the efforts that we know today as grid initiatives, but also from many other scientific and engineering areas.

just arrived

2007-05-09T05:35:00.000-07:00

I have just arrived to the user forum and I am taking contact with the people and the place.

GridWay Camp Alpha... Deployment Complete!

2007-05-09T05:15:00.000-07:00

Greetings from your faithfully informer.

Yesterday we had much job at demo booth number 40. Deployment implied laptops, fliers (with the official GridWay folder... A “must wear”) and also a big display with the GridWay logo.

If you want me to define with a word how the day was, I'd answer: BUSY. We had many visitors asking for different aspects of GridWay. The standard procedure is very simple: we have fliers with the general features of GridWay describing its architecture and benefits. Then, we give a Fusion Physics Application Porting flier (courtesy of the EGEE stand) where the first application, MARATRA was ported using GridWay (I'll talk further about it at the Workflow Session tomorrow). Also, visitors are encouraged to visit poster booth number 44, where another application which performs protein clustering and... yes, you guessed it, it was also ported with GridWay.

The day was also devoted to meet what I call “my Grid family”: People that I know from several Grid events with very tight friendship links. Definitely, the “Human Grid” is changing the concept of social infrastructure, always thanks to the new communication means. Anyhow, the environment gave us some opportunities to share great moments with our “beloved ones” like the Welcome Cocktail (even if we still had to answer questions from visitors) and the many pubs Manchester offer. My nightly recommendation goes for “The Old Monkey”, located at Portland Street.

An HEP Physicist at the EGEE User Forum

2007-05-09T03:03:00.000-07:00

Hi there!
Let's start with the presentations: my name is Danilo Piparo and I am a young physicist working at CERN from University of Milan Bicocca.

I arrived yesterday morning in Manchester and the UK weather gave me a really cold welcome... Luckily the afternoon was pleasantly sunny. I would say the city is really nice: from what i saw there are plenty of international restaurants and all the environment seems really lively!
Wondering around with the goal of finding a power supply adapter for visitors from the continent I just arrived near the University of ManchESTer. A lot of young people and a bunch of interesting pubs: I'll have to remember them for theese evenings..

But let's speak about the Forum.
The Manchester Central is a big Conference Center and its structures are suited to host such an important event.
The Poster and Demos are really interesting. Many aspects of GRID computing are covered: from Protein Clustering to the very well organised "Grid reliability" stand to medical imaging for heart disease.

The potential is huge and the event seems promising: let's see the evolution throughout the week!

Hello and Information Systems

2007-05-09T02:39:00.000-07:00

Hello,
Before beginning to write it seems only polite to introduce my work (click here to find out about me). I am from a field called Information Systems, which studies the social, political and economic dimensions of information and communications technology. So why am I am in manchester at an EGEE conference? Well I have a research interest in how Grids become incorporated in the work of scientists (in particular particle physicists at the LHC) and in how the work practices of this group shape the Grid being developed for their work.

Anyway - enough about me, you are really want to know about the EGEE user forum... So what I hope to do is give you a flavour of the meeting from an information systems perspective.... If you want to contact me by the way - my e-mail is w.venters@lse.ac.uk - and i would welcome your feedback!

GIIS: Grid Impressions Information Service

2007-05-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

So let me start a new section: Grid Impressions Information Service. Here, some human beings who participate in the Grid will answer to three simple questions:

QUESTION 1. "WHAT" ARE YOU IN THE GRID?

QUESTION 2. WHAT IS THE GRID FOR YOU?

QUESTION 3. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE GRID TO BE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

Who would dare to answer them? Will you? If so, send me your answers to jlvazquez@fdi.ucm.es. GridCast wants to know your opinion!

The "Invincible Armada" arrives to Manchester

2007-05-08T05:21:00.000-07:00

The only thing in common we have with the "Invincible Armada" is that we are all Spaniards (well, I'm just 50%). But you have to admit this is great title for a first blog entry.

We arrived in Manchester on a rainy Sunday and... Wait a minute! Who are we? We are the "GridWay Team" and we come from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. In our expedition we have both Research and Engineering Staff, all members of the Distributed Systems Architecture Research Group.

Our journey started at Madrid Barajas Airport, then we took a connection at London Heathrow to Manchester. The only "con" we encountered was that our baggage was lost. It seems the connection time at London was not long enough for letting our things to be "piped" in time to the new plane. But... no panic! we just got out of the hotel for buying some essentials and having dinner. Of course, we enjoyed walking by Manchester's streets. The first impression about the style of Manchester's architecture? If you ask me for a word I'd answer “retro-neogothic-modernistic-industrial”. Right, I'm a Computer Engineer working at the University as a Teaching Assistant and Researcher, not an architect... even if my area of research is tagged as “Computer Architecture”.

About the dinner: You definitely have to try the specialties from the Chinese/Thai restaurant at Oxford Street (walking after the Student Union). It's called "Mosso"-something and offers... over 400 different dishes! The prizes are not bad, it offers 20% student discount and the kitchen opens till 23.30 (which is a good thing in case you come from countries with late "time-habits").

Then it comes the hotel. We could manage to stay at the Palace Hotel Manchester for a prize similar to the ones proposed by the OGF. Look at the photos and judge by yourself.

And we arrive to Manchester Central. It's at a 5-10 minutes walk from our hotel, pretty near. We “logged in” early on Monday morning and everything was OK. Even, the organization gave us a present: The original cellular-shaped-joint-EGEE/OGF-calculator-timer!

Lunch consists in an ecologic paper bag filled with 2 sandwiches, potato chips, a chocolate bar and orange juice. Not bad but maybe I'd prefer the catering offered at the EGEE'06 conference. Our team started its duty on the OGF with an active participation in the Virtualization Working Group. Grids can be extended not only physically but virtually, responding to the correct machine configuration following user's requirements. This time is not the user who adapts its application to the grid machines, but the grid which adapts itself by “generating” the adequate machine.

On the other hand, we were working on the first “configurations” of the demo booth assigned to GridWay (D-40). The plasma screen is huge! The live demo will look great on it. Visitors will see how jobs are executed online in a joint infrastructure of EGEE and Non-EGEE resources.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the GridWay team has come to town!