Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
a core program to develop and broker generic technology solutions and
application-led Research Council programs to build communities and
develop exemplar services running on top of the underlying grids. For the
grid infrastructure development two main aspects were the establishment
of regional e-Science centers [2] and the creation of the UK Engineering
Task Force (ETF) [3], which oversaw, using expertise from each of the
regional e-Science centers, the development of prototype national grids
within the UK. In parallel, other activities such as the GridPP project were
funded to specii cally focus on developing e-infrastructure for the particle
physics community and to be a part of the much larger LHC experiment
at CERN and the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid Project (W-LCG) and,
in time, the EGEE project.
The ETF oversaw the collaborative efforts of the regional e-Science centers
in order to provide a grid test-bed for the deployment and evaluation of grid
middleware and applications. These efforts culminated in the creation of the
“Level 2” [4] grid in 2003, which paved the way for the creation of a produc-
tion grid service in the UK that would underpin e-Research activities. In
2003 the ETF Production Grid (ETFp) was created, which was later renamed
the National Grid Service. This i rst phase of the project was to establish, at
four sites in the UK, resources to underpin the grid infrastructure. In the
i rst phase the constituent sites chosen to be part of the NGS were the Science
and Technology Funding Council (STFC; then called CCLRC), the University
of Oxford, the , and the White Rose Grid site at the
University of Leeds. Hardware was procured through a tender exercise
from Clustervision and was deployed into service starting in April 2004.
6.3
Funded as part of the original e-Science core program by the Department of
Trade and Industry (DTI), the Grid Support Center (GSC) was funded for
two and a half years by the DTI Core e-Science Program. It was managed by
the then Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CLRC; now STFC)
e-Science Center and run by four STFC staff plus one FTE (full time equiva-
lent) from each Research Computing facility and
Edinburgh (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center) respectively. GSC also
received direct funding from the Particle Physics Research Council (PPARC)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and
Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC), and collaborated
with the Physics Department to provide support
for the HEP Data Grid via the GridPP project.
The GSC initially helped sites to deploy Globus, Condor, and SRB and to
learn how to manage and use the middleware. It produced the Grid Starter
Supporting the National Grid
 
 
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