SCIENCE

GlobusWORLD in Europe: First Annual GlobusEUROPE Event To Be Held in Lyon

Written by: Saqib Kazmi
Category: SCIENCE
For the first time ever, European users of the Globus suite of tools and services can meet at a conference founded specifically for their concerns and requirements.

The first annual GlobusEUROPE 2011 conference will be held on Monday, 19th September in Lyon, France, kicking off a week of co-located Grid conferences including the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) Technical Forum, Open Grid Forum (OGF33), and IEEE Grid 2011.

GlobusWORLD for Europe

GlobusEUROPE 2011 will be the premier event for users of Globus Toolkit and Globus Online in Europe. The conference is the European counterpart of GlobusWORLD, the largest global meeting of Globus users which takes place in the US each spring. GlobusEUROPE will bring together a range of users from communities across Europe, along with the Globus project lead from the US, the team from Intiative for Globus in Europe (IGE) and the European Globus Community Forum (EGCF).

“Up until now, all GlobusWORLD meetings have been held in the USA, which was costly for Europeans and drastically reduced European participation and representation,” says Helmut Heller, Project Director for the Initiative for Globus in Europe. “We wanted to bring Globus meetings to Europe so that we could focus on European Globus developments, needs, and usage. We're now following the lead provided by the highly successful HPC conference series, ‘Supercomputing’ or SC, where biannual meetings are held alternatively in the USA and Europe.”

“We're very excited about this first GlobusEUROPE meeting and look forward to stimulating and fruitful discussions, presentations, and keynote addresses,” adds Dr. Heller.  “I look forward to seeing many European Globus users there!”

“This is an important event for Globus users in Europe, and I’m so glad the IGE team was able to make it happen,” says Steve Tuecke, Globus co-founder and project lead, from the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. “Now European Globus users have an annual forum where they can share experiences and hear the latest technology updates from the Globus team. The entire worldwide Globus community will benefit from the establishment of this event, as the information that is shared and disseminated will trickle out to the entire network of Globus users.”

The invited keynote speaker, Steve Brewer, EGI’s Chief Community Officer, adds “The first GlobusEUROPE conference will allow EGI to further understand how the needs of Europe’s Globus users can be fully integrated into EGI’s sustainable support for pan-European research collaborations.”.

The Initiative for Globus in Europe: Meeting the Needs of European Globus Users

GlobusEUROPE is organised by the Initiative for Globus in Europe (IGE), which acts as a comprehensive service provider for the European e-infrastructures regarding the development, customisation, provisioning, support, and maintenance of components of the Globus Toolkit and Globus Online, in close collaboration with the European Grid Initiative (EGI), Distributed Computing Infrastructure (DCI) projects, and StandardDevelopmentOrganisations (SDOs). 

By coordinating Globus activities within Europe, IGE drives forward Globus developments according to the requirements of European users and strengthens the influence of European developers on Globus technology roadmaps. This ensures the representation of important European topics such as security and privacy, data privacy protection, compatibility with Grid standards used in Europe to enable interoperability, and aspects of multi-nationality.

“Before we started IGE, I was aware of various isolated Globus activities throughout Europe,” says Dr. Heller. “Although Globus is one of the most widespread global Grid middlewares, it was lacking a European support infrastructure which limited its usage here in Europe. Having been a satisfied Globus user myself for many years, I was committed to improving the usability for all Europeans.”

“The modular toolkit approach in Globus makes it a very valuable and powerful middleware,” explains Dr. Heller, “and so we started IGE in order to optimise its deployment for European users. It's only through IGE that it became possible to bring Globus into EGI, Europe's largest Grid. We're really very pleased with the early successes of the project to date, and look forward to further implementation of our goals.”

GlobusEUROPE 2011 Agenda Highlights

GlobusEUROPE is co-located with a number of important events for the European Grid community, including the EGI Technical Forum, Open Grid Forum (OGF33), and IEEE Grid 2011. Attendees can choose from a range of presentations and workshops to address their specific needs and can connect with other users and experts in the breaks, receptions and gala dinner event.

Dr. Heller from IGE will deliver a keynote regarding Globus position in Europe, including the outreach conducted by IGE to introduce Globus to different European communities and projects and the role of Globus Toolkit and Globus Online in Europe. His IGE colleague, Mr. Alexander Papaspyrou, will further elaborate on the IGE services available for the European community of Globus users, including precompiled Globus Toolkit 5, hub services, Globus mirror and the discussion board.

A keynote address will also be given by Dr. Tuecke, covering technology updates on the Globus Toolkit and GridFTP, including an overview of the 5.2 release and native packaging, as well as status on core components. Dr. Tuecke will provide updates on GRAM, jGlobus, and MyProxy with OAuth. Attendees will be given time to ask questions and provide their input into the direction and future plans for the Globus Toolkit.

Dr. Tuecke will also lead a presentation and demo of Globus Online, the new free service for large data movement over GridFTP that simplifies secure data movement without requiring construction of custom end-to-end systems. He will demonstrate using web and command line interfaces to make transfers, and will show how to use the Globus Connect feature for creating a local transfer endpoint (eg campus server or home computer/laptop) even if behind a firewall or NAT.

The final keynote address will be addressed by Mr. Brewer. Mr. Brewer will share with the attendees the present and future role of Globus in EGI, including where Globus tools can fit into the Unified Middleware Distribution (UMD) roadmap. “The first GlobusEUOPRE conference will allow EGI to futher understand how

In addition to the keynotes, users from across Europe will also present success stories to share their experiences, tips and lessons learned regarding Globus technologies. User presenters include:
  • David Wallom, Technical Director for the UK National Grid Service
  • Giuseppe Fiameni, PRACE 1iP Operations Task Leader
  • Dorian Gorgan, Chair of the "Computer Graphics and Interactive Systems" Research Group at the Technical University of Clui-Napoca in Romania
  • Adam Belloum, Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam
  • Andre Merzky, leading team member from the Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA)

Prof. Gorgan who was the inititator and director of the MedioGrid project and national research and academic Grid infrastructure, will share his experience on the challenges and issues in Earth Science oriented application development in Grid Architectures. Mr. Fiameni will address how PRACE, the pan-European Research Infrastructure for High Performance Computing, deals with the great challenge of integrating distributed environment where the resources are geographically distributed and heterogeneous. Detailed information about each talk can be found at http://www.globuseurope.org/agenda.
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