Project objectives

The overall Objective of EGI-ACE is to implement the Compute Platform of the European Open Science Cloud and contribute to the EOSC Data Commons by delivering integrated computing platforms, data spaces and tools as an integrated solution that is aligned with major European cloud federation projects and HPC initiatives.

Specific objectives

• Delivering the EOSC Compute Platform and expanding the supply-side
• Contributing to the implementation of the EU Data Strategy and the EOSC Data Commons to support the Green Deal, Health, Fundamental Research and Social Sciences and Humanities
• Integrating the EOSC Compute Platform with the EOSC Portal and the EOSC Core
• Contributing to the realisation of a global Open Science Cloud
• Expanding the demand-side of EOSC across sectors and disciplines

CMCC role

CMCC participates in EGI-ACE with the contribution to WP5 – Federated Data Spaces, leading the Task 5.2 Climate Research and WP7 – Service Delivery and Planning, Task 7.3 HPC Integration.

The objective of WP5 is to manage the Virtual Access to services of the EGI-ACE catalogue in the Data spaces category. The services are provided by major European research collaborations, research infrastructures and research institutes, and are composed of mature software tools, datasets and services that offer science discipline specific processing and data analysis capabilities for EOSC users.

Specifically, CMCC will make available the ENES data space in Task 5.2, which will deliver a single entry point to an open and cloud-enabled data science environment for climate data analysis on top of the EOSC Compute Platform implemented in the project. The service brings a data science environment to end users and operates on top of the ENES Climate Analytics Service (ECAS), which is one of the EOSC-Hub Thematic Services to deliver compute and analytics capabilities to end users. The service will provide access to (open) data from the ESGF federated data archive related to large community projects like CMIP6.

Work Package 7 is responsible for ensuring that ACE services are provided in conformance with their Service Level Agreements. This WP will work on expanding the infrastructure by two tasks dedicated to the integration of High-Performance Computing, High Throughput Computing and Cloud Integration. It also includes coordination of Green Computing activities within the project. An underlying theme of many activities within this work package is seeking collaboration with other EOSC initiatives, where possible, to exchange best practice and knowledge, and to align processes towards overall efficiency and a high-quality service delivery across EOSC.

Specifically, the objective of task 7.3 is to provide interoperability guidelines for HPC systems with the EOSC Cloud Compute platform. The task will explore how HPC systems should be exposed to the EOSC portal and how users should interact with them. Four scientific pilot use cases with combined cloud and HPC needs will be used for exploring and identifying gaps for the execution of container-based workloads, focusing on simplifying the portability of application across the different computing services available to EOSC users. Once validated, the interoperability guidelines will be made available for HPC providers outside the project to assist with integration activities.

Activities

EGI is an international collaboration that federates the digital capabilities, resources, and expertise of hundreds of national and international research communities in Europe and worldwide. With EGI-ACE the EGI Federation and research communities of pan-European relevance are joining efforts to deliver a distributed federated infrastructure that responds to the present and future needs of data-centric scientific computing in Europe, bringing together compute facilities, data, scientific applications, and software as the pillars of the EOSC Cloud Platform.

Expected results

Building on the distributed computing integration in the EOSC-hub project, EGI-ACE will deliver the EOSC Compute Platform and will contribute to the EOSC Data Commons through a federation of cloud compute and storage facilities, PaaS services and data spaces with analytics tools and federated access services.

The consortium of the project builds on the expertise and assets of the EGI federation members, key research communities, data providers and collaborating initiatives.

The platform will evolve beyond the state of the art through a data-centric approach, where data, tools and compute and storage facilities form a fully integrated environment accessible across borders thanks to virtual access.

Partners

• AGH University of Science and Technology
• Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
• The European Organization for Nuclear Research
• CESNET, Zájmové Sdružení Právnických Osob
• Consorzio Interuniversitario di Risonanze Magnetiche di MetalloProteine
• Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici
• Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique
• Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
• Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron
• EISCAT Scientific Association
• EMSO European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory, European Research Infrastructure Consortium
• EnhanceR
• National Infrastructures for Research and Technology S.A.
• Institute of Accelerating Systems and Applications
• Horia Hulubei National Institute for R&D in Physics and Nuclear Engineering
• Institute of Information and Communication Technologies
• Ustav Informatiky, Slovenska Akademia Vied
• Institut Jozef Stefan
• Associação INCD
• Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
• Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas
• Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil
• Mariene Informatie Service ‘MARIS’ BV
• Stichting Nederlandse Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Instituten
• Sciencesano
• University of Zagreb University Computing Centre SRCE Croatia
• SURFsara
• SzamitasTechnikai es Automatizalasi Kutató Intézet
• The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey
• Technische Universität Wien
• University Ss Cyril and Methodius in Skopje
• UK Research and Innovation

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