Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Kit and associated Web sites, and its staff took leading roles in tutorials,
courses, and workshops.
From October 2004 to September 2006 the Grid Operations Support
Center, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC), continued the work of the Grid Support Center in providing end
user support of grid activities within the UK. It was also part of the Grid
Operations Support Center remit to directly support the activities of the
then separately funded National Grid Service. The Grid Operations
Support Center and the National Grid Service were combined under the
one name of the National Grid Service for phase 2, which started in
October 2006.
6.4
Today the NGS manages and coordinates the generic grid infrastructure
for e-research within the UK. Combining the expertise of a core set of sites
providing access to computational and data resources, a support center
providing end-user support, documentation, and training, materials the
NGS currently supports over 700 individual users and a number of projects
that directly access the NGS and partner resources.
The mission of the NGS is to provide coherent electronic access for UK
researchers to all computational and data-based resources and facilities
required to carry out their research, independent of resource or researcher
location. The vision of the NGS is a robust, reliable, and trusted service
providing electronic access to the full range of computation and data-
based research facilities required by UK researchers. Access to resources
is location independent and based upon integrated open standards. A
range of sophisticated services to support coordinated collaborative and
cross-resource activities is provided.
To achieve this, the NGS leads the deployment of a common grid infra-
structure for combining services and information from multiple sources,
reducing the need for specii c arrangements for access, bespoke software, or
intensive researcher effort. Through the NGS Partnership program, the
NGS integrates services to access a growing number, scale, and variety of
resources spanning the complete space from advanced real-time facilities
such as synchrotrons and telescopes through to complex queries of historical
data stored in national or institutional data centers.
The NGS operates the core services required to exploit local, national,
and international partner facilities, providing support to the users of the
service, and monitors and troubleshoots the services provided by all part-
ners and the underlying infrastructure. This integration supports straight-
forward migration of work from local to national or international resources
as required and provides a standard set of interfaces and services whereby
National Grid Service Today
 
 
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