NorduGrid
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NorduGrid is a Grid Research and Development collaboration aiming at development, maintenance and support of the free Grid middleware, known as the Advanced Resource Connector (ARC). The collaboration was established by five Nordic academic institutes and is based upon a Memorandum of Understanding.
[edit] Background
The NorduGrid collaborative activity is based on the success of the project known as the "Nordic Testbed for Wide Area Computing and Data Handling" funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers via the Nordunet2 programme, and aims at continuation and development of its achievements. That project was launched in May 2001, aiming to build a Grid infrastructure suitable for production-level research tasks. Prior to 2002, NorduGrid was a supporting partner of the EU Datagrid (EDG) project.
In March 2002, NorduGrid developers diverged from EDG and came up with an original software architecture and implementation, which enabled Grid infrastructure to be set up already in May 2002. This infrastructure remains in continuous production-level operation since August 2002. It grew outside the Nordic area and includes sites from e.g. other European countries, Russia and Australia.
NorduGrid initiated several spin-off projects that provide funding for the research and development activities, most notably, the EU KnowARC project and the Nordic Data Grid Facility.
[edit] Objectives
The aim of the NorduGrid collaboration is to deliver a robust, scalable, portable and fully featured solution for a global computational and data Grid system. NorduGrid develops and deploys a set of tools and services – the so-called ARC middleware, which is a free software.
The goals of the NorduGrid collaboration are:
- Develop and support the ARC middleware.
- Coordinate contributions to the ARC code.
- Define strategical directions for development of the ARC middleware following latest tendencies in the Grid technologies.
- Promote ARC middleware solutions in such areas as Grid development, deployment and usage.
- Contribute to development of Grid standards, e.g. via the Open Grid Forum.
[edit] Organisation
The core of the NorduGrid collaboration historically consists of five Nordic academic and research institutes: Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, Helsinki Institute of Physics in Finland, Oslo University in Norway, and Lund and Uppsala Universities in Sweden. There are several associated partners.
NorduGrid activities are coordinated by the steering committee, and technical tasks are carried out by the technical group. Steering committee chair-person is appointed by the collaboration, and the technical coordinator - by the technical group.
[edit] Location and contacts
The NorduGrid collaboration is distributed across several countries by its nature. For administrative issues, the steering committee should be contacted through its chairperson (coordinator), and for the technical issues, the contact is the technical coordinator. The general entry point for the collaboration is the NorduGrid Web site, which lists all the contact information, including mailing lists and support system addresses.
[edit] Computing Resources
NorduGrid members are not required to provide computing or storage resources; neither offering such resources guarantees the membership.
NorduGrid members typically own a certain amount of computing and storage resources. They also may rent CPU cycles and storage facilities from their national providers and host institutes. Such resources constitute the testbed for the ARC middleware.
[edit] Community
Industrial, scientific or private organisations with interest in Grid computing are invited to contribute their compute power to the NorduGrid as a collaborator. For such, a tit-for-tat user group is offered as a virtual organisation (VO), allowing the mutual use ones resources.
One needs to distinguish between the NorduGrid as an international effort of several Nordic states with respective funding and the participation in the Grid infrastructure from which no rights may be deduced: resources deploying ARC middleware are not subject to NorduGrid collaboration funding, rules or policies.
The world-wide Grid based on ARC middleware is not regulated by NorduGrid: e.g., no allocations or authorisations can be granted or guaranteed by the NorduGrid.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- NorduGrid Web site
- KnowARC EU project contributing to the ARC middleware development
- Nordic DataGrid Facility, a Nordic project contributing to the ARC middleware development
