Central European ROC evolves into NGIs
The operations community is busy completing the transition from EGEE to EGI.
The Central Europe Regional Operation Centre (CE-ROC) shut up shop on 31 July, after providing core services in eight European countries for more than six years.
CE-ROC's closure is part of the transition from European Commission-supported regional operation centres to more sustainable National Grid Infrastructures (NGI). Soon South-East Europe ROC (SEE-ROC), one of the largest EGEE multi-country regions, will follow suit.
CE-ROC came to life during the first phase of the EGEE project to provide core operational services to Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Belarus, and Austria. Regional Operations Centres were the building blocks that contributed to defining policies, procedures and operational services when Europe's budding infrastructure was getting on its feet.
Over the past six years, the central European grid matured and evolved into a set of independent grid infrastructures under the technical supervision of the Polish operations centre. “Grids need support while they are developing,” says Tiziana Ferrari, EGI's Chief Operations Officer. “But when they grow big enough to become scientifically relevant in their own right, then it's natural to see a transition to independent grid.”
The migration of services from CE-ROC to national infrastructures started on 31 March, with the creation of PL-Grid, the Polish Infrastructure for Information Science Support in the European Research Space. Slovenia, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia followed in June, and in late July Belarus and Hungary achieved the final steps before take-off. Austria is now part of NDGF, the Nordic Data Grid Facility operations unit. The closure was completed on 31 July.
Dismantling regional operations centres adds the voice of many new partners to the EGI technical and advisory discussion boards. Ferrari welcomes the change: “New NGIs mean innovation – they will bring their own ideas, requirements and expertise,” she says. “This will make the European grid better as a whole.”
South-East Europe
ROCs were one of the main features of EGEE operations structure. With the transition to EGI, the trend towards decentralised and sustainable NGIs is sweeping across Europe.
The South-East Europe ROC is another operations unit currently evolving to independent units. NGIs in the south east region have been quite active in their preparations to become autonomous, even before the start of EGI-InSPIRE, reports Kostas Koumantaros, Operations Manager of Hellasgrid, which took over operations for Greece on 22 April.
AEGIS became responsible for services in Serbia on 16 June and the Turkish sites are now in the final stages of transition to Turkey's NGI. Bulgaria, Armenia and Israel have started the migration procedures and are scheduled to take charge of their own operations by 1 September. Koumantaros expects to see the remaining NGIs in SEE-ROC independent in the next 6 months.
