Virtualised Resources: Challenges and opportunities
Introducing a track at the EGI Technical Forum 2012 in Prague
The EGI Technical Forum 2012 will cover all aspects of the EGI ecosystem, grouped in the following five tracks: EGI Operations, Resource Infrastructure services, Virtualised Resources: challenges and opportunities, Virtual Research Environments, and last but not least, Community and Co-ordination.
The Virtualised Resources track focuses on challenges and opportunities that we are facing when building a federated Cloud infrastructure. Many issues are scoped around specific aspects on this area, many are cross-cutting and require attention from many stakeholders in the community. To help focusing discussions around some of these issues, this track on Virtualised Resources is organised around for key aspects reflecting four key stakeholders in this community:
Providing Cloud Services:
Cloud Platform operators talk about Cloud Service design, Customer support (account management, service desk, etc) and integration into operational infrastructure. Which provisioning techniques and technology was/is successful? Which hardware and software has proved to be a good combination to provide Cloud services? How are resources provisioned for individual research communities? How are resource commitments managed and monitored? Which needs were not met by existing Cloud management solutions?
Cloud Management solutions:
Technology Providers have a great impact on how Cloud services are provisioned, offered and monitored. Different Cloud Management solutions target different market segments (and at times even the same!), and providing Resource Infrastructure Providers with information on how their solutions may fit the Platform Operator's needs and improve their operating costs, e.g. by providing a technical overview on components, interfaces, and supported standards (technical and process).
Higher Level Services:
Which services are needed, and available, to efficiently use Cloud infrastructures? Services bridging the gap between pure Cloud infrastructure services and VREs, such as Brokers, Workflow services portals, etc. may be presented here that research communities may integrate in their virtual research environments (VREs).
Scientific software in the Cloud:
With flexibility comes responsibility - which impact has Cloud Computing on the architecture of scientific software? Which Cloud mechanisms are available to support e.g. high-availability for scientific applications (self-serving HA, etc.)? How does the process to "grid-ify" existing software differ from "cloud-ifying" the same software? Which process is more economic, or which type of scientific software is more suitable for cloudification than others?
Any type of contribution is welcome, whether oral presentations, workshops, demonstrations, posters, or trainings. For example:
- Cloud Service Providers from within the EGI community would like to host workshops or trainings to share their experiences in a practical manner with other Cloud providers from within the EGI community.
- Technology Providers may provide the EGI community with the latest proceedings and features that were included in their Cloud Management solutions
- Research Communities may be interested to organise and participate in a panel discussion exploring commonalities in higher level Cloud services they use, and whether there is potential in coordinating collaborative maintenance of such services
The following resources provide more information:
EGI Technical Forum 2012 main website: tf2012.egi.eu/
Call for Participation and track descriptions: tf2012.egi.eu/call-for-participation/index.html
Abstract submission website: go.egi.eu/tf12-submit
Key dates and deadlines: tf2012.egi.eu/dates/index.html
See you in Prague in September!
