EGEE Grid Project Meeting to Take Place in Prague

From 5 to 7 November, Prague will host a meeting of professionals participating in the European grid project EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-Science in Europe). This event is organized by the CESNET association in the premises of the Czech University of Life Sciences. Almost seventy guests from all over Europe are expected to participate.

JRA1 and SA3 All-hands meetings (JRA = Joint Research Activities, SA = Services Activities) of the EGEE project are a regular opportunity for personal meetings and intensive direct communication of developers from various parts of Europe. In addition to the standard content—handling of specific technical problems—the Prague meeting will be dedicated to discussions about the form of the middleware development and distribution in the new European grid infrastructure model. This concept is currently being designed in the EU project named EGI DS (European Grid Initiative—Design Study) in which CESNET has been participating from the beginning and which will gradually replace the existing EGEE infrastructure before 2010. JRA1 and SA3 activities of the EGEE project handle the development, maintenance and distribution of the grid middleware—software layer providing applications with access to grid resources (computing nodes, data repositories etc.).

The objective of the international EGEE project is to create a stable grid infrastructure in Europe with a significant global impact. The grid is primarily built for the community of particle physicists; however, the project also tries to support other user communities working in bioinformatics, medicine, computational chemistry, astronomy and astrophysics. Uniting over 90 partners from Europe, Russian, USA, Korea and Taiwan, the project consortium is coordinated by the European research centre CERN.

Since May this year, the third stage of the project has been in progress—EGEE III. The initial stage of the EGEE project was a part of the 6th EU Framework Program and was completed in May 2006, followed by the two-year EGEE II project. The third stage of the project, scheduled for completion in 2010, is a part of the 7th EU Framework Program. The objective of this stage is to extend, optimise and simplify (from the usage perspective) the existing grid infrastructure, keeping it operational and supporting users from various scientific communities. The essential step will be the migration from the grid management method based on specific scientific projects to a federative infrastructure, the basis of which will be the National Grid Initiatives.

It is the need to better define the future development and operation of the European grid infrastructure that resulted in creation of the EU EGI DS project, with the objective to design a concept of mutual cooperation among grid initiatives of individual states, both on the organization and the technological level, and to develop means needed to implement these objectives and test these means in real operation.

The CESNET Association is the most active institution from Central and Eastern Europe within the EGEE project. It is one of the few partners that participate in research activities, in particular in the development of the middleware services Logging and Bookkeeping and Job Provenance (job planning and monitoring). The CESNET association also has a significant share in the grid operation, represented by the management of the Central-European virtual organization. CESNET is responsible for the Grid Incident Response Team for the Central Europe. The CESNET association is the only organization from Central Europe that succeeded in obtaining direct funded participation in one of the project's development activities. The invitation to participate in development activities can be perceived as an appraisal of the high quality of the grid team operating within CESNET. The explicit and extensive contribution of CESNET to the project will allow for direct and immediate utilization of the European grid by all entities from the Czech Republic interested in this environment.

More information on the EGEE project is available at www.eu-egee.org. Specific information about CESNET's participation can be found at egee.cesnet.cz.

The CESNET association was founded by universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The association is currently financed mainly from the resources of the governmental Committee for Research and Education and the resources of the members of the association. The association deals with the research and development of information and communication technologies, building and developing the national gigabit optical network, CESNET2, designed for research and educational purposes. With its research activities and accomplishments, the CESNET association can represent the Czech Republic in the pan-European GÉANT2 network construction project, actively participating in the project implementation.