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Operations architecture and latest infrastructure figures

In January 2011, the Operations Management Board (OMB) met in Amsterdam to revise and approve the operations architecture, based on the notion of Resource Infrastructure.

Peter Solagna and Tiziana Ferrari walk us through the reviewed operations architecture and unveil the latest figures on the production infrastructure

Operations architecture

EGI provides access to resources, i.e. logical and/or distributed entities to be shared by end-users – for example CPUs, data storage, instruments and digital libraries. Resources are contributed by Resource Centres, also known colloquially as sites. The Resource Centre is the smallest localised or geographically distributed administration domain, where EGI resources are managed and operated. Resource Centres also provide the grid functional capabilities necessary to make their resources seamlessly accessible to authenticated and authorised users through common interfaces.

Resource Centres are interconnected by the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and GÉANT, and are usually federated to constitute a Resource Infrastructure. The legal entity responsible for its operation and integration into EGI is the Resource Infrastructure Provider.

The services needed to guarantee day-to-day operations are delivered by an Operations Centre. Locally, Operations Centres are responsible for supporting their Resource Centres, monitoring their performance, collecting requirements and for re-presenting them in EGI’s operations boards. Globally, the Operations Centre contributes to the development of the EGI operations roadmap and the evolution of EGI operations on behalf of its Resource Infrastructure Provider.

Local Services are complemented by EGI.eu Global Services such as the EGI Helpdesk, support, central monitoring and accounting and infrastructure oversight.

The sum of Local and Global Services in operations constitutes the EGI Service Infrastructure.

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Resource centres

At the end of March 2011 the EGI production Infrastructure included 332 Resource Centres from 58 countries and CERN. Thirteen of these resources are contributed through non-EGI-InSPIRE partners: China, Pakistan and New Zealand (Asia Pacific Federation); Austria and Estonia (NGI_NDGF Federation); Belgium (NGI_NL Federation); Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela (IGALC Federation); Canada and China (Canada Federation); Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico (Latin America Federation).

In the last 12 months the number of countries increased from 48 to 58: a 21% increase driven by the integration of infrastructures in the Baltic and South East Europe regions. Albania and Moldova are planning to be integrated during the course of 2011.

• Number of Resource Centres (EGI-InSPIRE partners): 332

• Target 2011: 300

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Operations centres

At the end of EGEE-III the Resource Infrastructure was operated by 14 Regional Operational Centres (ROCs): Asia Pacific, Canada, Central Europe, CERN, France, Germany/ Switzer-land, IGALC, Italy, Latin America, Northern Europe, Russia, South Eastern Europe, South Western Europe, and United Kingdom/Ireland.

This scenario has changed consi-derably during the first year of EGI-InSPIRE as the largest ROCs (Central Europe and South East Europe) were decommissioned. The EGEE ROCs have consequently developed into a much larger group of smaller Opera-tions Centres, which typically serve a single country.

EGI currently counts 32 Operations Centres: 22 are managed at a national level, one by a European Intergovernmental Research Organisation (CERN) and four by non-European Operations Centres: Asia Pacific, Canada, IGALC, and Latin America.

• SEE-ROC closes door on operations (Inspired, Winter 2011)

• Central European ROC evolves into NGIs (Inspired, Summer 2010)

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Infrastructure capacity

The capacity of the EGI Resource Infrastructure is regularly monitored. The metrics used to make this assess-ment are the number of logical CPUs (cores) and the HEP-SPEC 06, which is a standard metric to assess the com-puting capacity of physical machines.

The increase registered from April 2010 – at the start of EGI-InSPIRE – amounts to 7.9 % for logical CPUs and 39.8% for HEP-SPEC 06. The total installed disk capacity reported is 101 PB while the total ins-talled tape capacity amounts to 80PB.

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User statistics

At the end of March 2011, EGI had:

• 13,319 users (9.5% increase from March 2010)

• 186 Virtual Organisations, or VOs

High Energy Physics (HEP) accounts for 45.4% of the total number of users, followed by the 'infrastructure' VOs (a container of service or catch-all VOs) with 14.6%, multidisciplinary VOs (10.1%), Life Sciences (6.5%) and Computational Chemistry (3.7%).

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Job averages 

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Reliability and Availability

The quality of operational services delivered by Resource Centres, Resource Infrastructures and EGI is measured with Availability and Reliability metrics, computed from the results of periodic tests performed at all certified centres.

Reliability (May'10-March'11)*: 91.9%
Availability (May'10-March'11): 90.7%

*Target 2011 90.0%

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