Grid Application Toolkit and Testbed

GridLab is a combined research and development project to develop an innovative and flexible grid application toolkit, which will provide core, easy to use functionality through a carefully constructed set of generic APIs for both simulation codes and Grid software.

This toolkit will contain independent modules for handling many different aspects of Grid programming. Grid- enabled applications will be tested on real testbeds constructed by linking a heterogeneous collection of supercomputers and other resources spanning Europe and the US. The primary testbed environment for the project was created last year by the Applications Working Group of the European Grid Forum for demonstrations at SC2000.

I was one of the founders of the European Grid (EGrid) that merged with the Asia Pacific Gid and the US Grid Forum in the Global Grid Forum 2001. As such Fraunhofer SCAI participated as external partner in the GridLab testbed with one of its Computing Clusters.

Famework Programme: FP5-IST – Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on a “User-friendly information society, 1998-2002”

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PHOSPHORUS was a follow-up project on a European level of the German VIOLA project. As in VIOLA our focus was on the development of Grid middleware (UNICORE) extensions and the metascheduling system (MSS) to provide services for SLA Based Resource Orchestration using UNICORE. Additionally, in Phosphorus we developed and implemented a semantic layer that allowd automatically matching resource requirements of an application to the most suitable resources in the testbed. Key concepts are guaranteed advance reservation of Grid and network resources and bandwidth on demand for the end-user. Moreover, we also contributed to the development of an MPI version for distributed computing.

A new generation of scientific applications is emerging that couples scientific instruments, data and high-end computing resources distributed in a global scale. Developed by collaborative, virtual communities, many of these applications have requirements such as determinism (guaranteed QoS), shared data spaces, large data transfers, that are often achievable only through dedicated optical bandwidth.

High capacity optical networking can satisfy bandwidth and latency requirements, but software tools and frameworks for end-to-end, on-demand provisioning of network services need to be developed in coordination with other resources (CPU and storage) and need to span multiple administrative and network technology domains.

In response to the above requirements, PHOSPHORUS will address some of the key technical challenges to enable on-demand e2e network services across multiple domains. The PHOSPHORUS network concept and test-bed will make applications aware of their complete Grid resources (computational and networking) environment and capabilities, and able to make dynamic, adaptive and optimized use of heterogeneous network infrastructures connecting various high-end resources.

PHOSPHORUS will enhance and demonstrate solutions that facilitate vertical and horizontal communication among applications middleware, existing Network Resource Provisioning Systems, and the proposed Grid-GMPLS Control Plane. The PHOSPHORUS assessment will rely on experimental activities on a distributed test-bed interconnecting European and Worldwide optical infrastructures. Specifically, the test-bed will involve European NRENs and national test-beds, as well as GEANT2, Cross Border Dark Fibre Initiative and GLIF infrastructures. A set of highly demanding applications will be adapted to prove the concept.

PHOSPHORUS will disseminate procedures, toolkits and middleware to the EU NRENs and their users, such as Supercomputing centres and the wider European and worldwide scientific users.

Framework Programme: FP6-IST – Information Society Technologies: thematic priority under the specific programme “Integrating and strengthening the European research area” (2002-2006).

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Grid-friendly software licensing for location independent application execution

SmartLM developed and implemented a generic and flexible licensing virtualisation technology for new service-oriented business models across organisation boundaries.

The existing licensing models for commercial applications are focusing on software used on compute resources within an administrative domain. A problem occurs when we want to use this software in a distributed service oriented infrastructure where the resources are often not in the same administrative domain that hosts the license server which is authorizing the application use. Today licenses usually are bound to hardware within the domain of the user and do not allow access from outside thus enforcing local use of the protected applications only. The Grid approach in contrary is about using distributed resources from different domains. The experience made in many recent projects trying to use commercial applications in Grid systems clearly indicates a technological barrier of current licensing mechanisms that must be overcome before the Grid becomes a fully commercial productive environment.

SMARTLM solution is to implement licenses as Grid services thus providing platform-independent access just like other Grid resources. Service Level Agreements based on evolving standards will then govern licenses. Depending on the level of trust signed or encrypted, agreements will be used to transport licenses through the Grid to the resource to which a user has been granted access to execute his application tasks. The agreement on a license and the conditions of use for an application will be reached through negotiation between service providers and service customers.

SMARTLM will provide new generic licensing virtualization technology based on standards as WS-Agreement and WS-Negotiation and integrate it in the major Grid middlewares. The project will also identify new service-oriented business models for this approach. A number of widely-used license-protected commercial applications will be adapted to be executed under control of the new licensing mechanisms and will become part of a highly quality show-case to convince more code-owners to adapt their applications.

After the end of the funded period two project partners agreed to enhance the project results and to produce a commercial product called elasticLM providing License as a Service (LaaS). elasticLM was then used in the two Fortissimo projects for protecting software with flexible licensing suitable for distributed HPC computing. The development of elasticLM was discontinued after it has been use successfully in the Fortissimo projects.

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Optimized Infrastructure Services

With the challenges of service and infrastructure providers as the point of departure, OPTIMIS focuses on open, scalable and dependable service platforms and architectures that allow flexible and dynamic provision of advanced services.

The OPTIMIS innovations can be summarized as a combination of technologies to create a dependable ecosystem of providers and consumers that will be the foundation of an efficacious operation of services and infrastructures. This includes innovations for optimizing the whole service lifecycle, starting from service construction. Trust, risk, eco-efficiency and cost are all crucial for optimizing deployment and execution, capturing the essence of the optimized cloud ecosystem produced by the trust on consumers and providers and the risk of not accomplishing specific ecological or economical goals. Adaptive self-preservation is key to meet predicted and unforeseen changes in resource requirements.

Identification of new market roles and value activities calls for new business models and investigations of legal and regulatory aspects for governing cloud operation.Part of the OPTIMIS outcome will be architectures, an open specification, and a software toolkit for provisioning of sustainable IT services capable of satisfying key societal and economical needs. OPTIMIS will support the requirements of a variety of scenarios central to the next generation cloud service ecosystem by providing a toolkit with a set of key tools accompanied by reference architectures illustrating their use in a few scenarios of broad interest.

The scenarios in focus are (1) service providers utilizing cloud bursting to complement local capacity for peak loads, (2) service providers making use of multiple clouds, and (3) infrastructure providers subcontracting resources in a cloud federation. A core of the OPTIMS Toolkit is the OPTIMIS Base Toolkit comprising tools for assessing and managing aspects of trust, risk, eco-efficiency, and cost. By addressing the whole service lifecycle, taking into account the multitude of future cloud architectures, and a by taking a holistic approach to sustainable service provisioning, OPTIMIS provides a revolutionizing foundation for a reliable, sustainable, and trustful cloud market.

The project released its results in several  Open Source toolkits for Cloud providers. After the project ended the entire developmements have been transferred to the Open Source project OpenNebula for further use and exploitation.

Framework Programme: FP7-ICT – Specific Programme “Cooperation”: Information and communication technologies

The one-stop-shop for SMEs to access advanced simulation services on a pay-per use base

Fortissimo and Fortissimo 2 are collaborative projects that enable European SMEs to be more competitive globally through the use of simulation services running on a High Performance Computing cloud infrastructure. SCAI contributes to Fortissimo 1 and 2 with its expertise in two technology domains:

• advanced data analytics for big amounts of numerical simulation data and
• flexible licensing mechanisms for pay-per-use models in clouds.

The importance of advanced simulation to the competitiveness of both large and small companies is well established. The principal objective of Fortissimo is to enable European manufacturing, particularly small to medium enterprises (SMEs), to benefit from the efficiency and competitive advantage inherent in the use of simulation. However, the simulation of, for example, high-pressure gas cylinders, the moulding of plastics or the thermodynamic properties of hazardous materials requires enormous computing power and specialised software tools and services. Generally, large companies, which have a greater pool of skills and resources, find access to advanced simulation easier than SMEs which can neither afford expensive High Performance Computing equipment nor the licensing cost for the relevant tools. This means that SMEs are not able to take advantage of advanced simulation, even though it can clearly make them more competitive. The goal of Fortissimo is to overcome this impasse through the provision of simulation services running on a cloud infrastructure making use of High Performance Computing systems also making appropriate skills and tools available in a distributed, internet-based environment.

Fortissimo will make advanced simulation more easily accessible, particularly to SMEs, through the realisation of a “one-stop shop” where hardware, expertise, applications, visualisation and tools will be easily available and affordable on a pay-per-use basis. In doing this it will create and demonstrate a sustainable commercial ecosystem where actors at all levels in the value chain can realise sufficient commercial benefit to enable that ecosystem to persist independently of EU funding and continue to provide affordable services to manufacturing industry, particularly SMEs.

Fortissimo will be driven by end-user requirements where (~50) business-relevant application experiments will be used to develop, test and demonstrate both the infrastructure and the “one-stop pay-per-use shop”. The project participants represent all actors in the value chain. Not only will Fortissimo contribute to the increased competitiveness of European manufacturing industry through the innovative infrastructure that it will develop and test, but it will create commercial opportunities for European Independent Software Vendors, as well as for service and High Performance Computing infrastructure providers, through the creation of a new market for their products and services. Fortissimo places considerable emphasis on the exploitation of opportunities at all levels of the value chain ranging from the end-user to the High Performance Computing infrastructure provider.

Fortissimo involves 1,948.5 months of effort, a total cost of €21.9m and EC funding of €16m over a duration of three years, commensurate with achieving its ambitious goals.

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Addressing the adoption of next generation ICT advances in the manufacturing domain

Fortissimo and Fortissimo 2 are collaborative projects that enable European SMEs to be more competitive globally through the use of simulation services running on a High Performance Computing cloud infrastructure. SCAI contributes to Fortissimo 1 and 2 with its expertise in two technology domains:

• advanced data analytics for big amounts of numerical simulation data and
• flexible licensing mechanisms for pay-per-use models in clouds.

Fortissimo 2 will drive the uptake of advanced modelling, simulation and data analytics by European engineering and manufacturing SMEs and mid-caps. Such an uptake will deliver improved design processes, better products and services, and improved competitiveness. For the European Union as a whole this means improved employment opportunities and economic growth.

The importance of advanced ICT to the competitiveness of both large and small companies in the engineering and manufacturing domain is well established. Despite early successes in this area, there are still many barriers to the uptake of such solutions, not least of which are the initial cost and complexity of adoption, particularly in the context of challenging trading conditions. This proposal targets the ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) action line (Phase 2) and builds on Phase 1 of that initiative.

Phase 2 addresses the adoption of next generation ICT advances in the manufacturing domain. At the core of Fortissimo 2 are three tranches of Application Experiments (~35 in total). An initial set is included in this proposal and two further sets will be obtained through Open Calls for proposals. These experiments will be driven by the requirements of first-time users (predominately SMEs) and will bring together actors from across the value chain, from cycle providers to domain experts via the Fortissimo Marketplace. This will enable innovative solutions to manufacturing challenges, leading to new and improved design processes, products and services. A key feature of Fortissimo 2 will be the adaption of the Marketplace to meet the needs of end-users. It will offer a responsive and reliable service to companies which want to access HPC and Big resources and expertise.

Fortissimo 2 initially involves 732 months of effort, a total cost of €11.1m and EC funding of €10m over a duration of three years, commensurate with achieving its ambitious goals.

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StandICT.eu – Supporting European Experts Presence in International Standardisation Activities in ICT

In the context of the last framework programme Horizon 2020 the European Commission identified both the relevance of ICT standards for Europe and a lack of European contribution to international standards developments. As a consequence, the EC called for project proposals to reinforce European presence in international ICT standardisation. The project funding scheme was Coordination and Support Action (CSA).

StandICT.eu defines a pragmatic approach to reinforcing EU expert presence in international ICT standardisation. By setting up, managing & monitoring a continuous open call, StandICT.eu will provide a streamlined process supporting the participation & contribution of EU specialists in SDOs & SSOs in the 5 essential building blocks of the Digital Single Market (DSM), viz.: cloud computing, 5G communications, IoT, cybersecurity & data technologies.

Through a Standards Watch, StandICT.eu maps & monitors the international ICT standards landscape & then liaises with SDOs, SSOs & industry-led groups, identifying gaps & priorities which match EU DSM objectives: These will become topics for the continuous open call. Engagement will be supported through a series of motivational drivers, maximising impact & high-level commitment to standardisation from a broad stakeholder base. Specifying & strategically addressing DSM standardisation challenges, StandICT.eu analyses how to bolster EU’s presence and influence in international ICT standardisation & importantly the business impact on digital transformation on industry & consumers in strategic sectors such as eHealth, smart energy, intelligent transport systems & advanced manufacturing.

The Consortium Partners have a history of contributing to ICT Standards arena & consolidating a highly influential international network. Trust-IT: Expert SME in communicating benefits of standards in ICT. Fraunhofer SCAI: Institute for applied research contributing to development of standards with an active role in different SDOs. The Consortium is supported by an Expert Advisory Group of 15 members.

Main Project outputs are:

1 web platform with interactive global ICT standards map & online open call facility,

10 ICT standards priority reports,

1 continuous open call with 10 bimonthly cycles for applications, targeting 1000+ proposals, 300+ specialists supported, 50+ external evaluators,

and 8 ICT standards workshops.

Project partner

• Trust-IT Services Limited, Coordinator
• Fraunhofer  Institute SCAI

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Project webpage (follow-up project)