Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing - Open Science Grid
May 2007
Background
The Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) and the Open Science Grid (OSG) are collaborating to provide support for the use of the Virtual Data Toolkit (VDT) on the APAC National Grid.
The Open Science Grid is a US grid computing infrastructure that supports scientific computing via an open collaboration of science researchers, software developers and computing, storage and network providers. The OSG Consortium builds and operates the OSG, bringing resources and researchers from universities and national laboratories together and cooperating with other national and international infrastructures to give scientists from many fields access to shared resources worldwide.
APAC is a partnership of eight advanced computing infrastructure providers, and leads the development of advanced computing and grid infrastructure for Australia's research communities. APAC's mission is: ‘Providing the national advanced computing and grid infrastructure for eResearch”.
The APAC National Grid uses an innovative virtual machine based design to support multiple grid middleware stacks. APAC uses production and development VDT releases to provide the base middleware for Globus 2 and 4, as well as Gridsphere portal and data transfer interfaces for computing and data resources.
APAC has helped test and debug VDT, including identifying hard to find errors that occur under load in various environments. APAC agrees to provide front line support for the use of the VDT on its distributed facilities, while OSG agrees to a best effort basis for support of the software and responses to problems identified.
APAC OSG Software Support
APAC’s use of the VDT relies on the published VDT documentation and the standard VDT support mechanisms (email to the vdt-support@opensciencegrid.org). APAC will identify a liaison to the OSG and participate in VDT Office Hours when any issues arise in the use and support of the VDT.
Security
APAC participates in an Australian ‘e-security framework’ project and runs an IGTF-audited certificate authority. As such, APAC is aware of security issues and is cognizant of the relevant OSG security policies. APAC will provide a security contact who will accept VDT security patches distributed by the OSG and communicate advisories related to the software in the VDT from APAC to OSG.
Evaluation
An annual face to face meeting (which is documented) will be held between senior management of APAC and OSG to evaluate and determine future directions for the collaboration. Such a meeting should occur at an appropriate international workshop. Although it is recognized the partnership will evolve, minutes of issues, resolutions and a “satisfaction survey” will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the collaboration.
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