![THEME [INFRA-2012-3.3.] [Coordination Actions, Conferences and Studies Supporting Policy Development, Including International Cooperation, for E-Infrastructures]](http://data.docslib.org/img/cb73d831936fc3ecfcb9c0e27dca316d-1.webp)
THEME [INFRA-2012-3.3.] [Coordination actions, conferences and studies supporting policy development, including international cooperation, for e-Infrastructures]
Grant agreement for: Coordination and support action*
Annex I - "Description of Work" Project acronym: IDGF-SP Project full title: " International Desktop Grid Federation – Support Project " Grant agreement no: 312297 Version date: Table of Contents
Part A
A.1 Project summary ...... 3 A.2 List of beneficiaries ...... 4 A.3 Overall budget breakdown for the project ...... 5
Workplan Tables
WT1 List of work packages ...... 1 WT2 List of deliverables ...... 2 WT3 Work package descriptions ...... 5 Work package 1...... 5 Work package 2...... 7 Work package 3...... 10 Work package 4...... 13 Work package 5...... 17 WT4 List of milestones ...... 20 WT5 Tentative schedule of project reviews ...... 21 WT6 Project effort by beneficiaries and work package ...... 22 WT7 Project effort by activity type per beneficiary ...... 23 WT8 Project efforts and costs ...... 24 A1: Project summary
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP One form per project General information 3 Project title International Desktop Grid Federation – Support Project
4 Starting date 01/11/2012
5 Duration in months 24
6 Call (part) identifier FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2012-1 INFRA-2012-3.3.: Coordination actions, Activity code(s) most conferences and studies 7 supporting policy relevant to your topic development, including international cooperation, for e-Infrastructures
8 Free keywords
9 Abstract There are over a billion PCs in the world. Most of these PCs can be found in citizens’ homes and, to a lesser extent, in universities. Most of these computers remain idle most of the time. About 1 million of them are active in supporting science in a volunteer computing grid and use their idle time to run scientific applications. The potential growth of this computing capacity is enormous. Many Desktop Grids have therefore decided to found the International Desktop Grid Federation (IDGF) to help each other improving their e-Infrastructures. The IDGF-Support Project will give the IDGF a boost in two important areas. Firstly it will help considerably with increasing the number of citizens that donate computing time to e-Science.It will do so by targeted communication activities and settin-up a network of "ambassadors". Secondly it will help universities' e-infrastructures to include otherwise idle PCs from their class rooms and offices. In addition IDGF-SP will collect and analyse data that will help deploying idle PCs in an effective and energy efficient way. It has been shown that Desktop Grids can contribute to Green IT if used in the correct way. IDGF-SP will collect data to underpin and advocate best practices. As a result of IDGF-SP, the number of citizen volunteers donating computing to e-Science will increase significantly. By employing unused PCs in private Desktop Grid, universities and other research organisations, will save on their costs on providing computer capacity for their scientists. IDGF-SP will help strengthening the co-operation amongst Desktop Grid e-Infrastructure operators. IDGF-SP will encourage and help IDGF Desktop Grid providers to integrate their infrastructures into the main e-Science environment. The existance of an lively active IDGF community assures the swift take-up of the IDGF-SP project results.
312297 IDGF-SP - Part A - Page 3 of 5 A2: List of Beneficiaries
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP List of Beneficiaries
Project entry Project exit No Name Short name Country 10 month month MAGYAR TUDOMANYOS AKADEMIA SZAMITASTECHNIKAI ES 1 MTA SZTAKI Hungary 1 24 AUTOMATIZALASI KUTATO INTEZET 2 STICHTING ALMEREGRID ALMEREGRID Netherlands 1 24 3 THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER LBG UoW United Kingdom 1 24 4 UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN LU Netherlands 1 24 5 SONY EUROPE LIMITED SONY United Kingdom 1 24 6 THE WORLDWIDE COMPUTER COMPANY LIMITED CE United Kingdom 1 24 7 STICHTING INTERNATIONAL DESKTOP GRID FEDERATION IDGF Netherlands 1 24
312297 IDGF-SP - Part A - Page 4 of 5 A3: Budget Breakdown
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP One Form per Project
Participant Estimated eligible costs (whole duration of the project) Ind. number in Requested EU Participant short name 13 Coordination 11 costs Management (B) Other (C) Total A+B+C contribution this project / Support (A)
1 MTA SZTAKI T 170,745.00 67,732.00 0.00 238,477.00 212,643.00 2 ALMEREGRID T 164,784.00 0.00 0.00 164,784.00 146,932.00 3 UoW T 149,502.00 0.00 0.00 149,502.00 133,305.00 4 LU S 95,040.00 0.00 0.00 95,040.00 76,175.00 5 SONY A 106,787.00 0.00 0.00 106,787.00 95,218.00 6 CE T 77,125.00 0.00 0.00 77,125.00 68,769.00 7 IDGF F 142,383.00 0.00 0.00 142,383.00 126,958.00 Total 906,366.00 67,732.00 0.00 974,098.00 860,000.00 Note that the budget mentioned in this table is the total budget requested by the Beneficiary and associated Third Parties.
312297 IDGF-SP - Part A - Page 5 of 5 * The following funding schemes are distinguished Collaborative Project (if a distinction is made in the call please state which type of Collaborative project is referred to: (i) Small of medium-scale focused research project, (ii) Large-scale integrating project, (iii) Project targeted to special groups such as SMEs and other smaller actors), Network of Excellence, Coordination Action, Support Action. 1. Project number The project number has been assigned by the Commission as the unique identifier for your project, and it cannot be changed. The project number should appear on each page of the grant agreement preparation documents to prevent errors during its handling. 2. Project acronym Use the project acronym as indicated in the submitted proposal. It cannot be changed, unless agreed during the negotiations. The same acronym should appear on each page of the grant agreement preparation documents to prevent errors during its handling. 3. Project title Use the title (preferably no longer than 200 characters) as indicated in the submitted proposal. Minor corrections are possible if agreed during the preparation of the grant agreement. 4. Starting date Unless a specific (fixed) starting date is duly justified and agreed upon during the preparation of the Grant Agreement, the project will start on the first day of the month following the entry info force of the Grant Agreement (NB : entry into force = signature by the Commission). Please note that if a fixed starting date is used, you will be required to provide a detailed justification on a separate note. 5. Duration Insert the duration of the project in full months. 6. Call (part) identifier The Call (part) identifier is the reference number given in the call or part of the call you were addressing, as indicated in the publication of the call in the Official Journal of the European Union. You have to use the identifier given by the Commission in the letter inviting to prepare the grant agreement. 7. Activity code Select the activity code from the drop-down menu. 8. Free keywords Use the free keywords from your original proposal; changes and additions are possible. 9. Abstract 10. The month at which the participant joined the consortium, month 1 marking the start date of the project, and all other start dates being relative to this start date. 11. The number allocated by the Consortium to the participant for this project. 12. Include the funding % for RTD/Innovation – either 50% or 75% 13. Indirect cost model A: Actual Costs S: Actual Costs Simplified Method T: Transitional Flat rate F :Flat Rate Workplan Tables
Project number
312297
Project title
IDGF-SP—International Desktop Grid Federation – Support Project
Call (part) identifier
FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2012-1
Funding scheme
Coordination and support action
WT1 List of work packages
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP LIST OF WORK PACKAGES (WP)
WP Lead Start End Type of Person- Number WP Title 54 beneficiary 56 month month 53 activity 55 months 57 58 number WP 1 Management MGT 1 12.00 1 24 WP 2 Supporting infrastructure SUPP 1 24.00 1 24 WP 3 Addressing Citizens SUPP 2 36.75 1 24 WP 4 Addressing scientific organisations SUPP 3 29.75 1 24 WP 5 Analysis SUPP 5 33.50 1 24 Total 136.00
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 1 of 24 WT2: List of Deliverables
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP List of Deliverables - to be submitted for review to EC
Delive- WP Estimated Dissemi- rable Lead benefi- indicative 62 Delivery date Deliverable Title number Nature nation level 64 Number 53 ciary number person- 63 61 months
Project management D1.1 1 1 1.00 O CO 1 information system and tools Quality Management D1.2 1 1 1.00 R CO 3 and Progress Monitoring Plan Sustainability D1.3 1 1 2.00 R CO 3 plan Sustainability D1.4 1 1 2.00 R CO 22 plan (update) Policies and setup operations D2.1.1 2 1 2.00 R PU 3 for Grid operators Policies and setup D2.1.2 operations for 2 1 2.00 R PU 12 Grid operators (update) Production, Development, D2.2.1 Test, and 2 1 6.00 R PU 9 Validation Infrastructure Production, Development, Test, and D2.2.2 2 1 6.00 R PU 18 Validation Infrastructure (update) Report on best practices in D2.3.1 2 1 2.00 R PU 6 infrastructure support Report on best practices in D2.3.2 2 1 2.00 R PU 18 infrastructure support (update) Website D3.1 3 2 2.00 R PU 3 and general
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 2 of 24 WT2: List of Deliverables
Delive- WP Estimated Dissemi- rable Lead benefi- indicative 62 Delivery date Deliverable Title number Nature nation level 64 Number 53 ciary number person- 63 61 months
dissemination material Dissemination D3.2.1 3 2 1.00 R CO 6 plan Dissemination D3.2.2 3 2 1.00 R CO 18 plan (update 1) Dissemination D3.2.3 3 2 1.00 R CO 24 plan (update 2) Report on citizens focused campaigns and D3.3.1 citizen scientists 3 2 15.00 R PU 10 ambassador community building Report on citizens focused campaigns and D3.3.2 citizen scientists 3 2 15.00 R PU 22 ambassador community building (update) Report on scientific user D4.1.1 4 3 6.00 R PU 12 community involvement Report on scientific user D4.1.2 community 4 3 6.00 R PU 24 involvement (update) Report on IDGF application D4.2.1 4 3 6.00 R PU 9 porting and user support activities Report on IDGF application D4.2.2 porting and user 4 3 6.00 R PU 21 support activities (update) Intermediate report on the D5.1 5 5 8.00 R PU 10 green aspects of Desktop Grids Final report D5.2 5 5 8.00 R PU 22 on the green
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 3 of 24 WT2: List of Deliverables
Delive- WP Estimated Dissemi- rable Lead benefi- indicative 62 Delivery date Deliverable Title number Nature nation level 64 Number 53 ciary number person- 63 61 months
aspects of Desktop Grids Intermediate report on D5.3 the financial 5 5 2.00 R PU 10 evaluation of Desktop Grids Final report on the financial D5.4 5 5 2.00 R PU 22 evaluation of Desktop Grids Desktop Grids D5.5.1 for eScience 5 2 6.00 R PU 12 Roadmap Desktop Grids for eScience D5.5.2 5 2 6.00 R PU 24 Roadmap (Update) Total 117.00
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 4 of 24 WT3: Work package description
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP One form per Work Package
53 54 Work package number WP1 Type of activity MGT Work package title Management Start month 1 End month 24
55 Lead beneficiary number 1
Objectives
• Ensure the consistency of the overall resources used and the work performed. • Control the progress of the work so that the results of the project adhere to the grant agreement. • Organise and co-ordinate the production of deliverables, internal meetings, workshops. • Resolve any internal project conflict and build accountability into the project's work. • Report on project progress to the EC and to potential project sponsors. • Represent the project vision and mission in European and International events.
Description of work and role of partners
Task 1.1 Organize meetings This task deals with the organisation of the kick-off meeting, regular coordination (management/technical) meetings (typically one every quarter), review preparation meetings, project reviews/audits, on-line meetings, conference calls, etc.
Task 1.2 - Establish and maintain project management information system This task deals with the preparation and maintenance of the project workspace, including the project definition (project concept, description of work, project objectives, project results), beneficiaries coordinates, staff coordinates, work breakdown structure, responsibility matrix, deliverables schedule and workplans, activity definitions and planned effort per participant/activity/month.
Task 1.3- Establish and maintain strategic relationships This task deals with the preparation of MoUs with new partners, preparation and signing of NDAs, preparation of any necessary amendments, etc.
Task 1.4 - Prepare 3-monthly, yearly and final progress reports This task will coordinate the preparation of interim (quarterly) and periodic (yearly) progress reports covering the status of major project achievements. Activity progress (including any deviations and corrective actions taken), use and dissemination of project results, monitoring of milestones, on-going tasks and resource consumption.
Task 1.5 - Prepare cost statements and transfer interim payments This task deals with the cost statement preparation and the transferring of pre-financing to beneficiaries as per EC grant agreement and Project consortium agreement guidelines
Task 1.6 - Assess the project deliverables and conformance to requirements This task will ensure that all produced project deliverables and reports comply with pre-agreed quality criteria, project templates and guidelines.
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 5 of 24 WT3: Work package description
Person-Months per Participant
10 11 Participant number Participant short name Person-months per participant 1 MTA SZTAKI 12.00 Total 12.00
List of deliverables
Delive- Lead Estimated Dissemi- rable benefi- indicative 62 64 Deliverable Title Nature nation Delivery date Number ciary person- 63 61 number months level
Project management information D1.1 1 1.00 O CO 1 system and tools Quality Management and Progress D1.2 1 1.00 R CO 3 Monitoring Plan D1.3 Sustainability plan 1 2.00 R CO 3 D1.4 Sustainability plan (update) 1 2.00 R CO 22 Total 6.00 Description of deliverables
D1.1) Project management information system and tools: This deliverable is the set of communication and progress monitoring tools that will be used through-out the project. [month 1] D1.2) Quality Management and Progress Monitoring Plan: This deliverable describes the project internal quality management plan and all procedures and mechanisms to take and enforce decisions, monitor the status and progress of the project, internal review of all deliverables and react to conflicts and risks. The deliverable describes the outreach strategy planning including systematic monitoring and updates of outreach development as part of project reporting for the EC. [month 3] D1.3) Sustainability plan: This deliverable describes the approaches the projects aims to follow in order to deliver sustainable results for desktop grids development and deployment, which would continue after project funding. [month 3] D1.4) Sustainability plan (update): This deliverable describes the sustainability of the new grids and activities launched during the project and the sustainability plan of the project partners after project funding. [month 22]
Schedule of relevant Milestones
Lead Delivery Milestone benefi- 59 Milestone name date from Comments number ciary 60 number Annex I
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 6 of 24 WT3: Work package description
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP One form per Work Package
53 54 Work package number WP2 Type of activity SUPP Work package title Supporting infrastructure Start month 1 End month 24
55 Lead beneficiary number 1
Objectives
Set up service and infrastructure for support the other WPs work o Application and software repository o Basic bridge infrastructure o Portal / science gateway technology • Enhance the deployment, maintenance and operational policies for Grid operators (both Service Grid and Desktop Grid operators) who intend to connect their national or global Distributed Computing Infrastructures. This way they can expand the infrastructure they offer to their users and/or open their infrastructure to new users and user communities. • Provide support and maintenance for the existing computational, data distribution, and virtualisation middleware tools, technology and application repository. I.e. help organizations when setting up a new infrastructure. • Provide operational support to Grid operators that connect their Distributed Computing infrastructure to global DCI by operating an expert group/operation centre with special focus on tracking new technologies (handheld devices and virtualisation techniques). • Provide the latest best practices for organisations that express their intention to join the International Desktop Grid Federation as Grid operators (i.e. establish their infrastructure / connect it).
Description of work and role of partners
This work package provides support for efficient and harmonized operation of the infrastructures (both hardware and software).
Task 2.1 – Operational production infrastructure Task leader: SZTAKI T2.1 will provide support for the operation of the DCI infrastructure. This includes the support, maintenance, and operation of Bridges and Repositories enabling the interoperability between Desktop, Service Grids, and Clouds of European and ICPC participants. The task will run an operations centre leveraging on groups of IDGF. They will provide technical support and will also update the necessary policies for new connecting Grids. They will help both completely new Grids, and existing Grids that need to be connected.
Task 2.2 – Operational Test, Application Development and Validation infrastructures Task leader: SZTAKI This task will manage and support the Test, Application Development and Validation infrastructures. The Test Infrastructure will be utilised to test and fine tune the necessary bridge components when connecting new Grid infrastructures to the production infrastructure, to carry out measurements for green computing related studies and experiments.. The Application Development infrastructure will be used to support the development and testing of ported applications (as carried out by WP4). Finally, the Validation Infrastructure will be used for validating applications (within WP4) than run from Service Grid to Desktop Grid before they are deployed in the production application repository.
Task 2.3 – Best practices and roadmaps in DCI operations Task leader: SZTAKI This task will elaborate the latest best practices, reference and also joint roadmaps (for the new infrastructure operators intended to join the global DCI or establish a private/volunteer infrastructure with their resources.
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 7 of 24 WT3: Work package description
This task will provide information on technical, administrative, and security challenges/solutions in these documents from infrastructural point of view. The investigated topics will cover the key actors and roles in the DCI (application owner, SG and DG administrators, repository administrator, experts groups, etc.) concerning the infrastructure components (Repositories, Bridges, SG and DG components, etc.).
Task 2.4 – Provide support for the evaluation of the energy footprint Task leader: SZTAKI This task covers the support given to evaluation of the green aspects, as covered in WP5. The measurement of the energy consumption of Desktop Grid is performed in collaboration with the infrastructure providers.
Role of the partners
MTA SZTAKI will lead this work package and all the tasks, contribute to tasks 2.3 and 2.4, and participate in the other tasks. AlmereGrid will contribute particularly to task 2.3. IDGF will participate strongly in tasks 2.1 and 2.2. and contribute to the other tasks. UoW will participate in tasks 2.1 and 2.2. LU will participate in tasks 2.3 and 2.4. SONY will contribute to task 2.4.
Person-Months per Participant
10 11 Participant number Participant short name Person-months per participant 1 MTA SZTAKI 12.00 2 ALMEREGRID 1.00 3 UoW 2.25 4 LU 4.00 5 SONY 1.25 7 IDGF 3.50 Total 24.00
List of deliverables
Delive- Lead Estimated Dissemi- rable benefi- indicative 62 64 Deliverable Title Nature nation Delivery date Number ciary person- 63 61 number months level
Policies and setup operations for Grid D2.1.1 1 2.00 R PU 3 operators Policies and setup operations for Grid D2.1.2 1 2.00 R PU 12 operators (update) Production, Development, Test, and D2.2.1 1 6.00 R PU 9 Validation Infrastructure Production, Development, Test, and D2.2.2 1 6.00 R PU 18 Validation Infrastructure (update) Report on best practices in D2.3.1 1 2.00 R PU 6 infrastructure support Report on best practices in D2.3.2 1 2.00 R PU 18 infrastructure support (update)
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 8 of 24 WT3: Work package description
List of deliverables
Delive- Lead Estimated Dissemi- rable benefi- indicative 62 64 Deliverable Title Nature nation Delivery date Number ciary person- 63 61 number months level
Total 20.00 Description of deliverables
D2.1.1) Policies and setup operations for Grid operators: This deliverable will define the policies for Grid operators to join the extended DCI. The deliverable will describe also the setup operations of the production, development, test, and validation infrastructures. [month 3] D2.1.2) Policies and setup operations for Grid operators (update): This deliverable will define the policies for Grid operators to join the extended DCI. The deliverable will describe also the setup operations of the production, development, test, and validation infrastructures. The update will contain the experiences and improvements. [month 12] D2.2.1) Production, Development, Test, and Validation Infrastructure: This deliverable describes the current status of Production, Development, Test, and Validation Infrastructures including Bridges, Repositories, and SG/DG infrastructures. [month 9] D2.2.2) Production, Development, Test, and Validation Infrastructure (update): This deliverable describes the current status of Production, Development, Test, and Validation Infrastructures including Bridges, Repositories, and SG/DG infrastructures. The updated version will contain the experiences and improvements. [month 18] D2.3.1) Report on best practices in infrastructure support: The deliverable will report on the operation of the help desks and expert support groups, and will also analyse and describe the latest best practices suggested for infrastructure operation and support. [month 6] D2.3.2) Report on best practices in infrastructure support (update): The deliverable will report on the operation of the help desks and expert support groups, and will also analyse and describe the latest best practices suggested for infrastructure operation and support. The updated version will contain the experiences and improvements. [month 18]
Schedule of relevant Milestones
Lead Delivery Milestone benefi- 59 Milestone name date from Comments number ciary 60 number Annex I Basic infrastructure and application support MS1 1 9 D2.4.1, D2.3.1, D4.3.1 ready Year one campaign results, information and D2.1.2, D3.3.1, D4.1.1, MS2 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 12 D5.1, D5.3, D5.5.1 for eScience Advanced infrastructure and application MS3 1 21 D2.4.2, D2.3.2, D4.3.2 support ready Year two campaign results, information and D3.3.2, D4.1.2, D5.2, MS4 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 24 D5.4, D5.5.2 for eScience
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 9 of 24 WT3: Work package description
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP One form per Work Package
53 54 Work package number WP3 Type of activity SUPP Work package title Addressing Citizens Start month 1 End month 24
55 Lead beneficiary number 2
Objectives
• Set up joint awareness campaigns targeted towards citizens • Develop localizable tools • Set up network of citizen scientists as ʻambassadorsʼ • Creating awareness about IDGF-SP by dissemination of the IDGF-SP project itself
Description of work and role of partners
Task 3.1 Set up joint awareness campaigns Task leader: AlmereGrid Encourage citizens and others to include sources at home, companies, schools, etc. Encourage them to join or connect to one of the existing Volunteer Grids from IDGF members. This requires the development of a special awareness campaigns with material explaining the benefits and what to do, teaching materials, instructional materials, including videos. Designing and executing awareness and promotional campaigns. The campaigns will be coordinated with members of IDGF in different countries.
Task 3.2 Development of supporting communication tools Task leader: AlmereGrid Develop and maintain a portal that can be localized in several languages. Develop other supporting material, such as posters, flyers, brochures and movies.
Task 3.3. Set-up a network of citizen scientists that can act as ambassadors Task leader: AlmereGrid Reaching large number of potential volunteers can best be done through peers. We will participate with organizations that are working on science and citizens already in a broader perspective, and supply them with targeted documentation and information material they can distribute. Another category we will target as ambassadors are retired persons that are interested in volunteer work. Amongst them is a number of persons with a technical or scientific background that are good at advocating technology including Desktop Grid technology. We will organize special ambassador activities and events.
Task 3.4 Dissemination of the project itself Task leader: AlmereGrid Most of the project is doing specific communication and dissemination activities targeted towards different audiences. However, task 3.4 will concentrate on communication about the project itself, its goals, work packages, and progress. This specific dissemination activity will target stakeholders such as other projects, European Union/Commission, the eScience community in general. It will coordinate dissemination activities with the other tasks and WPs (by providing general dissemination descriptions and materials).
Role of the partners AlmereGrid will lead this work package and all tasks. MTA SZTAKI will contribute to tasks 3.1, 3.2, and 3.4. UoW will participate in task 3.1. LU will participate in tasks 3.3 and 3.4. CE will contribute to tasks 3.1 and 3.3. IDGF will contribute to tasks 3.3 and 3.4.
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 10 of 24 WT3: Work package description
Person-Months per Participant
10 11 Participant number Participant short name Person-months per participant 1 MTA SZTAKI 5.00 2 ALMEREGRID 12.00 3 UoW 2.25 4 LU 6.00 6 CE 6.00 7 IDGF 5.50 Total 36.75
List of deliverables
Delive- Lead Estimated Dissemi- rable benefi- indicative 62 64 Deliverable Title Nature nation Delivery date Number ciary person- 63 61 number months level
Website and general dissemination D3.1 2 2.00 R PU 3 material D3.2.1 Dissemination plan 2 1.00 R CO 6 D3.2.2 Dissemination plan (update 1) 2 1.00 R CO 18 D3.2.3 Dissemination plan (update 2) 2 1.00 R CO 24 Report on citizens focused D3.3.1 campaigns and citizen scientists 2 15.00 R PU 10 ambassador community building Report on citizens focused campaigns and citizen scientists D3.3.2 2 15.00 R PU 22 ambassador community building (update) Total 35.00 Description of deliverables
D3.1) Website and general dissemination material: A general website with information on the project and a portal e-Infrastructure that provides information on Desktop Grids and connected DCIs. The portal will also support the International Desktop Grid Federation and technical documentation. Some general dissemination material will also be available in printed format. [month 3] D3.2.1) Dissemination plan: The Dissemination plan reports the dissemination activities of the past period and the plans for the next period. The Dissemination plan at the end of the project summarizes all activities in the project and provides a final analysis of the effectiveness of the dissemination activities. [month 6] D3.2.2) Dissemination plan (update 1): The Dissemination plan reports the dissemination activities of the past period and the plans for the next period. The Dissemination plan at the end of the project summarizes all activities in the project and provides a final analysis of the effectiveness of the dissemination activities. [month 18] D3.2.3) Dissemination plan (update 2): The Dissemination plan reports the dissemination activities of the past period and the plans for the next period. The Dissemination plan at the end of the project summarizes all activities in the project and provides a final analysis of the effectiveness of the dissemination activities. [month 24]
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 11 of 24 WT3: Work package description
D3.3.1) Report on citizens focused campaigns and citizen scientists ambassador community building: [month 10] D3.3.2) Report on citizens focused campaigns and citizen scientists ambassador community building (update): [month 22]
Schedule of relevant Milestones
Lead Delivery Milestone benefi- 59 Milestone name date from Comments number ciary 60 number Annex I Year one campaign results, information and D2.1.2, D3.3.1, D4.1.1, MS2 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 12 D5.1, D5.3, D5.5.1 for eScience Year two campaign results, information and D3.3.2, D4.1.2, D5.2, MS4 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 24 D5.4, D5.5.2 for eScience
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 12 of 24 WT3: Work package description
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP One form per Work Package
53 54 Work package number WP4 Type of activity SUPP Work package title Addressing scientific organisations Start month 1 End month 24
55 Lead beneficiary number 3
Objectives
• Broaden scientific user communities of Desktop Grids on local (private grids), national (NGI) and European (EGI) level by o increasing awareness regarding the applicability of desktop grid computing in scientific research and industrial conduct, o providing success stories, participation in events, flyers and expanding the already established International Desktop Grid Federation, o promoting technologies developed by the EDGI, EDGeS and DEGISCO projects extending the usability and increasing the quality of service provided by desktop grids o organising training events for scientific and industry end-users, applications developers and systems administrators • Support scientific organisations in establishing local desktop grid infrastructures and in collaborating to utilise these infrastructures with best efficiency. • Provide support for application developers for porting and deploying applications on desktop grid infrastructures, and support the certification of new Application Development Centres based on the IDGF Application Development Methodology. • Provide application validation service, and support the establishment and certification of new Application Validation Centres based on the IDGF Application Validation Procedure. • Support the operation of ported applications on the production infrastructure by operating a central IDGF helpdesk, and by supporting the establishment and accreditation of 2nd tier helpdesks and expert groups. • Collect and disseminate best practices in application development and user support within existing and potential new IDGF user communities
Description of work and role of partners
Task 4.1 – Activities to increase the awareness and understanding of desktop grid technologies within scientific user communities Task leader: UoW This task addresses objectives 1 and 2 by disseminating the latest results and technologies of desktop grid computing towards scientific user communities, and by organising training courses to facilitate the broader take-up of these technologies. Application domain specific success stories will be written and published. Participation and presentations on specific user community related events (workshops, conferences, industry events, etc.) will be organised. Scientific organisations will be supported in setting up local desktop grid infrastructures (with concrete technical support provided by WP2). Training courses for different audiences (end-users, application developers and system administrators), and existing or potential user communities will be held. Emphasis will also be put on training future trainers and provide them with IDGF training certification to facilitate the sustainability of these events. Training material will be made available and updated on-line.
Task 4.2 – Analysis of potential applications to be ported to desktop grid platforms Task leader: UoW This task also contributes to the implementation of objective 1 by analysing the feasibility of applications of potential new user communities on IDGF supported platforms. The task will utilise the IDGF Application Description template to collect information about the applications, and together with the user community it
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 13 of 24 WT3: Work package description will analyse the feasibility of the porting and identify user requirements.
Task 4.3 – Supporting application developers Task leader: UoW The task implements objective 3 by providing technical support for established and new application developers. Already practising application developers will benefit by joining and actively participating in IDGF on-line forums and attending face-to-face meetings or advanced training events. New application developers will be supported by on-line material and also hands-on support from the established IDGF application development centres (e.g. GASuC and W-GRASS). IDGF will also provide certification for new application developers who successfully demonstrated significant skills and knowledge in IDGF related application development areas.
Task 4.4 – Application validation service Task leader: SZTAKI This task implements objective 4 by providing a central IDGF Application Validation Certification Service and by also establishing local IDGF certified application validation centres. As the user community grows the application validation service should become more and more decentralised allowing local validation centres to validate applications. On the other hand IDGF needs to assure that these validation centres are following the IDGF validation procedure correctly, and that they operate up to the required quality of service levels. These QoS requirements will be clearly established together with the certification procedures of the local validation centres.
Task 4.5 – User support Task leader: SZTAKI The task will implement objective 5 by operating the central IDGF helpdesk and expert group that coordinates the establishment and operation of 2nd tier local helpdesks and user support centres. The local helpdesks will be responsible for the day to day operation of the local infrastructure and user support. The central helpdesk will publish and update guidelines for establishing and operating local helpdesks on a regular basis and will support the local helpdesks in their daily operations. The guidelines will be influenced by the feedback provided by the local helpdesk operators and by the input from the IDGF expert groups. The necessary policies for these hierarchical methods will be defined by WP1. Task leader: SZTAKI
Task 4.6 – Best practices in application development and user support Task leader: SZTAKI This task implements objective 6 by elaborating and disseminating best practices for application developers and end-users who intend to utilise the IDGF related infrastructures. The task will provide recommendations regarding application porting, validation and operational practices.
Role of partners UoW will lead this work package and tasks 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3. MTA SZTAKI will lead task 4.4, 4.5, 4.6. LU will contribute to task 4.2. SONY will contribute to task 4.6. IDGF will participate in tasks 4.1, 4.3 and 4.6.
Person-Months per Participant
10 11 Participant number Participant short name Person-months per participant 1 MTA SZTAKI 8.25 3 UoW 12.00 4 LU 2.00 5 SONY 2.00 7 IDGF 5.50 Total 29.75
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 14 of 24 WT3: Work package description
List of deliverables
Delive- Lead Estimated Dissemi- rable benefi- indicative 62 64 Deliverable Title Nature nation Delivery date Number ciary person- 63 61 number months level
Report on scientific user community D4.1.1 3 6.00 R PU 12 involvement Report on scientific user community D4.1.2 3 6.00 R PU 24 involvement (update) Report on IDGF application porting D4.2.1 3 6.00 R PU 9 and user support activities Report on IDGF application porting D4.2.2 3 6.00 R PU 21 and user support activities (update) Total 24.00 Description of deliverables
D4.1.1) Report on scientific user community involvement: This deliverable will summarise activities related to increasing the awareness of IDGF supported technologies within scientific user communities at the end of the first year of the project. The report will describe dissemination activities and training courses targeting scientific user communities, and will report on the establishment of local desktop grid infrastructures. [month 12] D4.1.2) Report on scientific user community involvement (update): This updated deliverable will summarise activities related to increasing the awareness of IDGF supported technologies within scientific user communities at the end of the first year of the project. The report will describe dissemination activities and training courses targeting scientific user communities, and will report on the establishment of local desktop grid infrastructures. [month 24] D4.2.1) Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities: This deliverable will report on all application and user support activities (including best practices) during the initial phases of the project. Newly identified and supported user communities will be described together with application development, validation, deployment and user support activities provided for these communities. [month 9] D4.2.2) Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities (update): This updated deliverable will report on all application and user support activities (including best practices) during the initial phases of the project. Newly identified and supported user communities will be described together with application development, validation, deployment and user support activities provided for these communities. [month 21]
Schedule of relevant Milestones
Lead Delivery Milestone benefi- 59 Milestone name date from Comments number ciary 60 number Annex I Basic infrastructure and application support MS1 1 9 D2.4.1, D2.3.1, D4.3.1 ready Year one campaign results, information and D2.1.2, D3.3.1, D4.1.1, MS2 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 12 D5.1, D5.3, D5.5.1 for eScience Advanced infrastructure and application MS3 1 21 D2.4.2, D2.3.2, D4.3.2 support ready
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 15 of 24 WT3: Work package description
Schedule of relevant Milestones
Lead Delivery Milestone benefi- 59 Milestone name date from Comments number ciary 60 number Annex I Year two campaign results, information and D3.3.2, D4.1.2, D5.2, MS4 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 24 D5.4, D5.5.2 for eScience
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 16 of 24 WT3: Work package description
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP One form per Work Package
53 54 Work package number WP5 Type of activity SUPP Work package title Analysis Start month 1 End month 24
55 Lead beneficiary number 5
Objectives
• Collect and analyse data to support the use of Desktop Grids. Give evidence based answers. • Continue work on Green Desktop Grids • Analyse financial benefits of Desktop Grids
Description of work and role of partners
Task 5.1 – Evaluate energy footprint of Desktop Grids Task leader: SONY This task takes care of integrating into the BOINC framework, the necessary code to monitor the usage, CPU status, and power consumption of the computing node. A binary distribution of BOINC will be prepared for the project partners who participate in the evaluation. Combined with an external Wattmeter, the integrated module will provide detailed information about how much energy is required by each node, and about how efficient each node is used.
Task 5.2 – Evaluate technologies to reduce the energy footprint of Desktop Grids Task leader: SONY This task extends Task 5.1 by integrating in BOINC additional code to evaluate the efficiency of energy saving techniques. In particular, we will test whether SONY’s slow background computing technique is a valid option for scientific computing. This task covers also the evaluation of the performance/energy ratio for mobile devices, in particular, of the Android platform.
Task 5.3 – Evaluate the financial benefits of Desktop Grids Task leader: SONY In this task, the project partners provide a financial estimate of their Desktop Grids. With this data, we elaborate simple financial models to further promote the use of Desktop Grids.
Task 5.4 – Roadmap update Task leader: AlmereGrid This task conducts surveys and uses other means of information gathering to collect basic data that can be used as input for the updated road map. It will organise a consultation process to create the updated version of the Road map. The created road map will be used as input for dissemination activities (including collaboration activities and community management.) The road map will be updated towards the end of the project.
Role of the partners SONY will lead this work package and tasks 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3. AlmereGrid will lead task 5.4 and contribute to other tasks. MTA SZTAKI will contribute to task 5.3 and 5.4. UoW will contribute to 5.2 CE will contribute to task 5.3 IDGF will participate in task 5.4.
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 17 of 24 WT3: Work package description
Person-Months per Participant
10 11 Participant number Participant short name Person-months per participant 1 MTA SZTAKI 5.00 2 ALMEREGRID 6.75 3 UoW 2.25 5 SONY 12.00 6 CE 4.00 7 IDGF 3.50 Total 33.50
List of deliverables
Delive- Lead Estimated Dissemi- rable benefi- indicative 62 64 Deliverable Title Nature nation Delivery date Number ciary person- 63 61 number months level
Intermediate report on the green D5.1 5 8.00 R PU 10 aspects of Desktop Grids Final report on the green aspects of D5.2 5 8.00 R PU 22 Desktop Grids Intermediate report on the financial D5.3 5 2.00 R PU 10 evaluation of Desktop Grids Final report on the financial D5.4 5 2.00 R PU 22 evaluation of Desktop Grids D5.5.1 Desktop Grids for eScience Roadmap 2 6.00 R PU 12 Desktop Grids for eScience Roadmap D5.5.2 2 6.00 R PU 24 (Update) Total 32.00 Description of deliverables
D5.1) Intermediate report on the green aspects of Desktop Grids: This deliverable describes the initial results of Tasks 5.1 and 5.2, which include the energy measurements and the technology evaluation. [month 10] D5.2) Final report on the green aspects of Desktop Grids: This deliverable is an update of D5.1. It lays out the conclusions on the energy footprint of Desktop Grids and of the evaluation of energy-saving technologies. [month 22] D5.3) Intermediate report on the financial evaluation of Desktop Grids: This deliverable collects the initial data for the financial evaluation of Desktop Grids. [month 10] D5.4) Final report on the financial evaluation of Desktop Grids: This deliverable updates and extends D5.3 with the conclusions on the financial aspects and business models for Desktop Grids. [month 22] D5.5.1) Desktop Grids for eScience Roadmap: Road map on all aspects of setting up a Desktop Grid. [month 12] D5.5.2) Desktop Grids for eScience Roadmap (Update): Updated road map on all aspects of setting up a Desktop Grid. [month 24]
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 18 of 24 WT3: Work package description
Schedule of relevant Milestones
Lead Delivery Milestone benefi- 59 Milestone name date from Comments number ciary 60 number Annex I Year one campaign results, information and D2.1.2, D3.3.1, D4.1.1, MS2 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 12 D5.1, D5.3, D5.5.1 for eScience Year two campaign results, information and D3.3.2, D4.1.2, D5.2, MS4 analysis reports and updated Desktop Grids 1 24 D5.4, D5.5.2 for eScience
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 19 of 24 WT4: List of Milestones
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP List and Schedule of Milestones
Milestone 53 Lead benefi- Delivery date 59 Milestone name WP number 60 Comments number ciary number from Annex I Basic infrastructure MS1 and application WP2, WP4 1 9 D2.4.1, D2.3.1, D4.3.1 support ready Year one campaign results, information and analysis reports WP2, WP3, D2.1.2, D3.3.1, D4.1.1, MS2 1 12 and updated WP4, WP5 D5.1, D5.3, D5.5.1 Desktop Grids for eScience Advanced infrastructure and MS3 WP2, WP4 1 21 D2.4.2, D2.3.2, D4.3.2 application support ready Year two campaign results, information and analysis reports WP2, WP3, D3.3.2, D4.1.2, D5.2, MS4 1 24 and updated WP4, WP5 D5.4, D5.5.2 Desktop Grids for eScience
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 20 of 24 WT5: Tentative schedule of Project Reviews
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP Tentative schedule of Project Reviews
Review Tentative Planned venue 65 Comments, if any number timing of review RV 1 13 Brussels RV 2 25 Brussels
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 21 of 24 WT6: Project Effort by Beneficiary and Work Package
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP Indicative efforts (man-months) per Beneficiary per Work Package
Beneficiary number and short-name WP 1 WP 2 WP 3 WP 4 WP 5 Total per Beneficiary 1 - MTA SZTAKI 12.00 12.00 5.00 8.25 5.00 42.25 2 - ALMEREGRID 0.00 1.00 12.00 0.00 6.75 19.75 3 - UoW 0.00 2.25 2.25 12.00 2.25 18.75 4 - LU 0.00 4.00 6.00 2.00 0.00 12.00 5 - SONY 0.00 1.25 0.00 2.00 12.00 15.25 6 - CE 0.00 0.00 6.00 0.00 4.00 10.00 7 - IDGF 0.00 3.50 5.50 5.50 3.50 18.00 Total 12.00 24.00 36.75 29.75 33.50 136.00
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 22 of 24 WT7: Project Effort by Activity type per Beneficiary
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP Indicative efforts per Activity Type per Beneficiary
Part. 1 Part. 2 Part. 3 Part. 4 Part. 5 Part. 6 Part. 7 Activity type Total MTA SZT ALMEREG UoW LU SONY CE IDGF
3. Consortium Management activities WP 1 12.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 12.00 Total Management 12.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 12.00
4. Other activities Total other 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Work Packages for Support activities WP 2 12.00 1.00 2.25 4.00 1.25 0.00 3.50 24.00 WP 3 5.00 12.00 2.25 6.00 0.00 6.00 5.50 36.75 WP 4 8.25 0.00 12.00 2.00 2.00 0.00 5.50 29.75 WP 5 5.00 6.75 2.25 0.00 12.00 4.00 3.50 33.50 Total Support 30.25 19.75 18.75 12.00 15.25 10.00 18.00 124.00
Total 42.25 19.75 18.75 12.00 15.25 10.00 18.00 136.00
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 23 of 24 WT8: Project Effort and costs
1 2 Project Number 312297 Project Acronym IDGF-SP Project efforts and costs
Estimated eligible costs (whole duration of the project)
Beneficiary Beneficiary Indirect costs Requested EU Personnel Subcontracting Other Direct OR lump sum, number short name Effort (PM) Total costs contribution (€) costs (€) (€) costs (€) flat-rate or scale-of-unit (€) 1 MTA SZTAKI 42.25 177,450.00 0.00 21,282.00 39,745.00 238,477.00 212,643.00 2 ALMEREGRID 19.75 122,450.00 0.00 14,870.00 27,464.00 164,784.00 146,932.00 3 UoW 18.75 112,500.00 0.00 12,085.00 24,917.00 149,502.00 133,305.00 4 LU 12.00 72,000.00 0.00 7,200.00 15,840.00 95,040.00 76,175.00 5 SONY 15.25 80,825.00 0.00 8,164.00 17,798.00 106,787.00 95,218.00 6 CE 10.00 58,427.00 0.00 5,844.00 12,854.00 77,125.00 68,769.00 7 IDGF 18.00 108,000.00 0.00 10,653.00 23,730.00 142,383.00 126,958.00 Total 136.00 731,652.00 0.00 80,098.00 162,348.00 974,098.00 860,000.00
312297 IDGF-SP - Workplan table - Page 24 of 24 1. Project number The project number has been assigned by the Commission as the unique identifier for your project. It cannot be changed. The project number should appear on each page of the grant agreement preparation documents (part A and part B) to prevent errors during its handling. 2. Project acronym Use the project acronym as given in the submitted proposal. It cannot be changed unless agreed so during the negotiations. The same acronym should appear on each page of the grant agreement preparation documents (part A and part B) to prevent errors during its handling. 53. Work Package number Work package number: WP1, WP2, WP3, ..., WPn 54. Type of activity For all FP7 projects each work package must relate to one (and only one) of the following possible types of activity (only if applicable for the chosen funding scheme – must correspond to the GPF Form Ax.v): • RTD/INNO = Research and technological development including scientific coordination - applicable for Collaborative Projects and Networks of Excellence • DEM = Demonstration - applicable for collaborative projects and Research for the Benefit of Specific Groups • MGT = Management of the consortium - applicable for all funding schemes • OTHER = Other specific activities, applicable for all funding schemes • COORD = Coordination activities – applicable only for CAs • SUPP = Support activities – applicable only for SAs 55. Lead beneficiary number Number of the beneficiary leading the work in this work package. 56. Person-months per work package The total number of person-months allocated to each work package. 57. Start month Relative start date for the work in the specific work packages, month 1 marking the start date of the project, and all other start dates being relative to this start date. 58. End month Relative end date, month 1 marking the start date of the project, and all end dates being relative to this start date. 59. Milestone number Milestone number:MS1, MS2, …, MSn 60. Delivery date for Milestone Month in which the milestone will be achieved. Month 1 marking the start date of the project, and all delivery dates being relative to this start date. 61. Deliverable number Deliverable numbers in order of delivery dates: D1 – Dn 62. Nature Please indicate the nature of the deliverable using one of the following codes R = Report, P = Prototype, D = Demonstrator, O = Other 63. Dissemination level Please indicate the dissemination level using one of the following codes: • PU = Public • PP = Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) • RE = Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services) • CO = Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services) • Restreint UE = Classified with the classification level "Restreint UE" according to Commission Decision 2001/844 and amendments • Confidentiel UE = Classified with the mention of the classification level "Confidentiel UE" according to Commission Decision 2001/844 and amendments • Secret UE = Classified with the mention of the classification level "Secret UE" according to Commission Decision 2001/844 and amendments 64. Delivery date for Deliverable Month in which the deliverables will be available. Month 1 marking the start date of the project, and all delivery dates being relative to this start date 65. Review number Review number: RV1, RV2, ..., RVn 66. Tentative timing of reviews Month after which the review will take place. Month 1 marking the start date of the project, and all delivery dates being relative to this start date. 67. Person-months per Deliverable The total number of person-month allocated to each deliverable. FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action PART B SUPPORT ACTION
Table of Contents
B1. CONCEPT AND OBJECTIVES, QUALITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SUPPORT MECHANISMS AND ASSOCIATED WORK PLAN ...... 4 B1.1 CONCEPT AND PROJECT OBJECTIVE(S) ...... 4 1.1.1. The eScience ecosystem ...... 4 1.1.2. Volunteer Desktop Grids ...... 5 1.1.3. Public large scale Volunteer Desktop Grids ...... 13 1.1.4. Private Desktop Grids ...... 16 1.1.5. Related predecessor FP7 projects ...... 19 1.1.6. Green aspects ...... 25 1.1.7. International Desktop Grid Federation ...... 28 1.1.8. The Desktop Grids for eScience Road Map ...... 29 1.1.9. Future of volunteer computing and IDGF-SP approach ...... 30 1.1.10. Summary of background and principles ...... 31 1.1.11. Project Objectives...... 33 1.1.12. Quality metrics ...... 34 B1.2
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Amendment history in PART B
Version Date Section Author Modification
The IDGF-SP proposal reformatted 1.0 12/03/12 All RL according to the PART B template.
Requests from negotiation mandate implemented: 7.1.a – Section B1.3 B1.3, B2.1, 1.1 16/03/12 RL 7.1.b, 7.1.c – Section B2.1 B3.2, NEF 7.2 – Section B3.2 7.5 – added in NEF as D1.3 and D1.4
Requests from negotiation meeting minutes implemented: Dissemination related text (Point 1.a) is moved from B1.3 to B3.2 and now it is complete. One sentence about the exceptions added. 2.0 6/4/12 B3.2, B2.1 RL Dissemination related text (Point 1.c) improved in B2.1. Dissemination related text (Point 2) updated in B3.2. SONY / LU indirect cost fixed (20%).
GANTT is updated with the 2 requested new deliverables. B1.3.2, 2.1 10/4/12 AE, RL B.1.1.12, NEF 3 new metrics added Person-months given to all deliverables.
Footnotes added about UNESCO 2.2 23/4/12 1.1.12 RL nomenclature and baseline.
AlmereGrid/IDGF descriptions updated 2.3 21/5/12 B2.2 RL concerning in-house consultants.
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AlmereGrid is removed as beneficiary from B2.2 Roles of MTA SZTAKI is broadened in B2.2 Comment (“not as beneficiary but as partner”) added to AlmereGrid related B2.2, B2.3, 2.4 27/9/12 RL parts in B2.3 and B2.4 B2.4, NEF NEF: tasks of AlmereGrid have been taken over by MTA SZTAKI, budget and manmonth values of AlmereGrid are merged into MTA SZTAKI’s budget and manmonth values Table 8 updated in B2.4
B1.1.3, B1.1.5 2.5 5/10/12 B2.3, B2.4 RL AlmereGrid related parts removed B3.2
B2.2, B2.3, Roll back to version 2.3: all AlmereGrid B2.4, NEF, related parts are placed back 2.6 1/21/13 B1.1.3, RL B1.1.5, B3.2 Amendments in AlmereGrid description taking into consideration the latest feedbacks from the auditors
Changes are marked either by track changes or by blue background for new 2.7 1/23/13 RL pieces of text moved backed from version 2.3 (May 2012)
Amendments in beneficiary description of 2.8 4/2/13 B2.2 RL IDGF
AlmereGrid description is extended with 2.9 15/2/13 B2.2 (page 49) AE, RL more details about the in-house consultant related parts and organisation of work
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B1. CONCEPT AND OBJECTIVES, QUALITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SUPPORT MECHANISMS AND ASSOCIATED WORK PLAN
B1.1 Concept and project objective(s)
1.1.1. The eScience ecosystem For many scientists computational modelling is becoming more and more important for their work. In the whole spectrum, depending on the kind of application, one sees increasing use of local clusters, of national and international Service Grids and of supercomputers. Not only is it important for them to have access to the computational power to run their models, but also it is of equal importance to be able to collaborate with researchers across the world. In these collaborations one often shares computational power. Large amounts of data, fast networks and lots of computing capacity are the main hardware ingredients of what is called the eScience ecosystem: everything that is needed for electronic science. In addition to the hardware, specialized software and experts are needed. Clusters of computers, Service Grids and supercomputers all cover specific areas in the computational spectrum. If one wants to run very large tightly coupled models, supercomputers are the only way. If one has general type of large throughput work, but needs to collaborate with many other researchers in many places, one needs Services Grids. When one has large throughput jobs all year around, but does not need to share with other researchers, an in-house computer-cluster may be the right option. Desktop Grids1 are a fourth category of large scale computing resources available to scientists. In a Desktop Grid, one aggregates the unused computing cycles of a large number of Desktop computers to run one single application. A Desktop Grid is not suited for all kinds of applications, but it is very useful for “pleasantly parallel applications” such as parameter sweeps, Monte Carlo Simulations, etc. The pyramid below shows the relationship between different models of distributed computing that are used.
Figure 1: Relationship between different models of distributed computing From an economic point of view; at the top of the pyramid are the high-end supercomputers. Large, expensive, but extremely powerful computers, of which there are only a few hundreds in the world. They can solve a wide variety of computational problems, but at a considerable
1 http://desktopgridfederation.org
Page 4 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action cost. At a slightly lower performance level are the cluster-based service Grids that connect tens of thousands of cluster servers from scientific institutes. These computational resources are very powerful, but effective only for a limited set of applications, still cheaper than high- end supercomputers. At the bottom level we find the volunteer and organizational Desktop Grids. Still very powerful, but for an even limited application set only. However, they are inexpensive compared to the top of the pyramid. In conclusion, if an application fits the Desktop Grid, this platform is the cheapest option. Therefore, a special class of scientific applications is needed to make efficient use of Desktop Grids.
As a rule of thumb the scientist should run the given application on the lowest possible level of the pyramid: that is the most cost-effective solution.
What Desktop Grids bring to (scientific) users For scientific users, Desktop Grids can add a large number of resources for “pleasantly” parallel applications. They can (perhaps with assistance from local administrators) set up a local Desktop Grid inside an organization, or (participate in) a volunteer Desktop Grid. It also offers an opportunity to communicate with the general public about their scientific work.
Interconnection There are also complex applications that need more types of computers. Some parts can be run on a Desktop Grid, others on a high-end supercomputer. Or the application can migrate transparently from one type of distributed computing infrastructure to another type. There are bridging technologies that make this possible. Collaborations between numbers of infrastructure providers are already in place to enable these applications. Policy bodies like e- IRG2 set the legal and political frameworks. Science has become a very collaborative endeavour. Scientists from Europe collaborate with those in Asia and the Americas. So also connections on all levels are needed. Several European projects are addressing this; first the EDGeS project has shown that using a “DCI Bridge” between Desktop Grids and Service Grids (such as EGI), it is possible to connect these Grids in a way that jobs can be run on the combined infrastructure. Later EDGI, and DEGISCO project (described in Sections 1.1.5.3) targeted the future development related to this kind of interoperation of Desktop grids with other platforms and their dissemination/support activities.
New technologies Science and technology are continuously developing. Desktop grids are developing too. Today, Cloud computing is en vogue, and Green technologies are rapidly evolving. Several efforts are underway to integrate Desktop Grids and Clouds.
1.1.2. Volunteer Desktop Grids 1.1.2.1. Importance Scientists need a lot of computing power. This is organized as local PC's, clusters, Grids, supercomputers that can be financed in a number of ways. However, for many applications, Desktop Grids already provide large computational resources comparable in size to the largest
2 http://www.e-irg.eu/
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Grid infrastructures in Europe. The e-IRGSP3 project maintains the e-IRG Knowledge base3 an overview of a number of Grids, their sizes and the number of resource owners in a Grid.
Figure 2: Number of Computers and resources owners per Grid for a number of European Grids. Source: e-IRG Knowledge base Please note these figures count computers (for Desktop Grids) and nodes (for Service Grids). The number of CPU's and cores can be larger. A computer can be part of more than one Grid. Note the large difference between the number of resource owners in a Desktop Grid and in a Traditional Service Grid.
Of course, there is a lot to say about this data; especially if one goes into the detail. However, there is one single message we can and want to deduct from this data: Public desktop grids can and do contribute a significant amount of resources for science.
This has two implications: First, there is science that can be done in a less expensive and “greener” way. Second, it shows that citizens are interested in science and are willing to contribute. Less expensive is, of course, also important for e-Infrastructures. In addition to Public Desktop Grids, local desktop Grids, inside a university or research institute can also be an interesting option. The greener argument needs some explanation. Of course, when people at home use their computer for science, it uses power, and consumes electricity. However, if the grid middleware and the applications are optimized to save energy, they can run optimal on a Desktop PC and in many cases even on laptops. They then run at a cooling optimized rate, and they do not use the screen, for instance. However, the most important savings part is because the equipment is used efficiently. (And no new systems need to be bought elsewhere in the e-Infrastructures system.)
Within the project we will especially encourage people at home to donate unused computing time to Science. They can choose what type of science they want to support.
3 http://knowledgebase.e-irg.eu
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1.1.2.2. Surveys (EDGeS, WEB2GRID, CERN/CCC) EDGeS Survey Public Desktop Grids, or volunteer computing Grids, assume that there are millions of citizens that want to donate computing time to science. But is this the case? Are citizens willing to do that? Are there any obstacles to reach large volunteer computing Grids? The EDGeS project conducted a survey in 2008 amongst citizens and companies in Europe about their interest in donating computing time in a volunteer computing setting. We here provide a summary of the main results.
The overall conclusion from this survey was that there is interest in Desktop Grid volunteer computing in Europe. There are many more persons and companies that answer positively to the question whether they want to donate computing time or - for companies and organisations - want to install a Grid of their own.
Figure 3: Interest and experience in donating computing time However, that people are willing to change their current practice and say that they want to participate in volunteer computing efforts does not mean that they are actually going to do that. Communication is a means to try to convince them to do so. The survey results show that it is very important to generate trust in the organisation that manages the Grid. People do not want to donate computing time through an organisation they do not trust. Of course, it depends on the type of volunteer Desktop Grid one is running how this trust best can be generated.
A second clear result from the survey is that people want to donate computing time for scientific applications, especially medical applications. They do not like to donate computing time to commercial or defence applications (Fig. 5).
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Figure 4: Kind of applications to run A third observation (Fig. 6) is that people want feedback on the application they are running. If they donate computing time, they want to know to which application, what are the results and what is the scientific merit of the application.
There were no clear technical barriers perceived by the respondents or other clear recommendations that could be made from this survey: most statements were strongly agreed or disagreed with. Companies (and other organisations) have a quite positive attitude towards running their own Desktop computing Grid. Most companies participating in the survey agreed with the statement that a Grid is cheaper than running a cluster and it can deliver a reliable service. Most companies also considered a Grid being complex and they would need assistance in porting applications to it.
Companies participating in the survey in general do not have a problem with running their applications on someone else's computer in the Grid. They do have a problem when that involves storing their data on someone else's computer, unless the data is encrypted. Most companies that did participate in the Survey were SMEs without prior experience with Service Grids or Desktop Grids.
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Figure 5: Feedback on applications So Desktop Grids can aggregate a lot of computing power, and in principle citizens are interested in donating computing to volunteer Desktop Grids. But to make them really useful Desktop Grids need to be an integral part of the total Distributed Computing Infrastructure eco-system. That is exactly what the EDGeS and EDGI projects did accomplish in Europe, and DEGISCO in several ICPC countries around the world.
WEB2GRID survey4 In order to measure the potential impact of the combined WEB 2.0 and volunteer Grid related ideas, a survey has been made among citizens including several groups of questions:
Use of computers in generally Use of Web 2.0 applications Awareness of desktop grid technologies Motivations which help offer spare computers capacities Obstructive factors The first three groups of questions allowed us to discover the habits and the background of citizens concerning the related IT technologies. The last two groups of questions gave more details on the motivations and obstructive factors that would accelerate or slow down the penetration of the developed technologies among the average citizens and the exploitation process based on either volunteer or paid services. Both the motivation and obstructive factors have objective (technology) and subjective (human) aspects that the survey intended to investigate.
The survey has been distributed to 1000 volunteers in Hungary and the evaluation is based on 174 replies. Based on the gathered statistics, the survey can be considered not fully representative in the group of Hungarian internet users over age 14 but covers a wide range in age and location.
4 WEB2GRID survey was carried out in 2010 by the NKTH (Hungary) financed WEB2GRID project.
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In general, most of the adult internet users have got desktop grid-ready computers; 75% have max. 5 year-old computer and over 80% have broadband internet access. They mostly use community portals (only 1 out of 7 had negative, uncertain, or other reply) and would request enhanced Web 2.0 related applications; such as advisory systems, content based search facilities on photos and videos, and also services which could prevent or at least decrease the number of data and identity thefts (see Figure below).
Figure 6: The evaluated distribution of the usage of Web2.0 based applications We experienced low awareness of desktop grid solutions. Furthermore, only a low fraction of the asked people has ever joint a volunteer project, and the situation is even worse with the volunteers who remain active in the projects.
Concerning the motivations, the grand challenge applications with strong impact on the standard of living (e.g. research on climate change) would get the highest support from the volunteers; the majority would help them with spare computer capacities. 2 out of 5 from the sample are ready to support the research pursued by local universities or institutes. Basic research and the improvement of Web 2.0 and search engines are not popular. In order to attract such volunteers, the desktop grid operators have to develop advanced methods for motivation in such competitive environments. According to the survey, a strong motivation might not be real financial advantage but the collection of virtual credits, obtaining badges in competitions, the glory when the volunteers computer finds the breakthrough in the research are not the main factors. One quarter of the sample showed no willingness to join any volunteer project at all. Concerning the financial benefits, one third of the sample would offer a home computer in the range 0.2-1 EUR for at least a 4 hour-long period per day, and one quarter would require even less contribution (0.2 EUR). The financial motivations are shown in the Figure below.
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Figure 7: Financial motivations behind volunteering The source of major obstructive factors that may keep away the citizens from volunteer projects is the lack of trust. One of the main issues is strongly related to the security holes. The possible illegal misuse of the home computers by the others, and the lack of control over the deployed and executed software packages were also major factors. The fear of slowing down computer during its everyday usage was reported as well. However, the possible increased electricity cost is not mentioned among the major factors, more likely the lower awareness of green technologies and environment protection comparing to the generic IT security problems is the reason. The up-to-date and easy-to-understand information transfer about the progress and results of the volunteer applications must be vital. Providing escape routes, e.g. easy shut down, complete uninstall and incident report functionalities, would help improve the trust between the DG/Web 2.0 providers together with obtained certificates from well-known sources for the services and applications.
Citizen Cyberscience Centre report5 (CERN/CCC) The report provides an analysis and evaluation of the possible sustainability models (business models) for Volunteer Cloud Computing. Currently on one side there are millions of volunteers willing to share their CPU power and on the other side there are scientists who need this CPU power but don't really know how to obtain this from the volunteers.
The main purpose of the report is to suggest different institutional arrangements that would lower the entry barrier for scientists to Volunteer Cloud Computing, and in particular present such resources to them as a service that was fully compatible with the way they use their current computing infrastructure.
In order to achieve this goal we made an analysis of what Volunteer Computing represents today in terms of technology limitations and costs that should be taken into account when starting to use this infrastructure.
5 Sustainability Models for Volunteer Cloud Computing, Summary of a report commissioned by the Citizen Cyberscience Centre September, 2011
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The method of analysis included running surveys and having direct interviews with some of the main stakeholders in this domain. We have also used current research documentation and tools in order to compute costs, earnings and measure marketing outreach for different cases.
We found that the four most important assets of Volunteer Cloud Computing that can be used to create sustainability are:
• The huge community of volunteers behind it, 6.6 million registered volunteers, many being technology very savvy. • Almost free computation power, the overhead for accessing the volunteer resources being minimal. • No major modifications needed to the current scientific project work flow. • Compatibility with the main commercial cloud, Amazon. The last two of these assets have recently been developed thanks to a project called LHC@Home at CERN. The term Volunteer Cloud Computing, in the context of this report, refers to traditional volunteer computing combined with these two new benefits.
Based on these main assets we explored four possible Use Cases in which Volunteer Cloud Computing can achieve the dual purpose of lowering the cost of scientific computing and providing the scientists concerned with a significant outreach opportunity.
• Volunteer Cloud Computing for CERN (single institution implementation) • Volunteer Cloud Computing for Industry (R&D type usage by large companies) • Nonprofit Volunteer Cloud Computing (A foundation to help spread the technology) • Commercial Volunteer Cloud Computing (A start-up company to provide the service) For each Use Case we describe the main benefits for the customers (scientists) and other stakeholders, we formalize the business model using the `The Business Model Canvas` and we make a SWOT analysis in order to estimate the likelihood of success of the Use Case.
The report finds that:
• There are several opportunities to implement Volunteer Cloud Computing as a sustainable model and states them in terms of the 4 possible Use Cases. • The main barriers to do this are related to potential users/customers not being familiar with the Volunteer Cloud Computing concept and concern that volunteers would lose interest if they hear that a for-profit company is involved. The most important recommendations for successful implementation of Volunteer Cloud Computing are:
• investing adequate effort to inform the volunteers clearly of the scientific purpose and results of the project; • making the customers aware of the major outreach opportunity that a public project based on volunteers represents; • making the customers and their funding sources more aware, in detailed quantitative terms, of the excellent cost/performance relation when using Volunteer Cloud Computing, compared with other options;
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• making the customers aware of the wide range of profiles and motivations of the volunteers who contribute to projects, including a significant dedicated minority who will support a project with high level computer skills. The information presented in this report has some limitations of accuracy due to the lack of rigorous documentation regarding current computational costs (hardware and personnel) and in some cases due to difficulties to get certain representatives to answer our questions precisely.
1.1.3. Public large scale Volunteer Desktop Grids Volunteer Desktop grids open the opportunity for citizens to become citizen-scientists: they can by donating unused computing time, contribute to the scientific process. They can also learn about the science they are contributing to and engage in discussions about the contributions to science. In some examples, it can even be identified that a scientific discovery can be traced back to having been done on a specific volunteer computer. Of course, this depends on the type of science done.
There are about 70 volunteers desktop Grids based on BOINC technology active, according to http://boincstats.com. About 45 of these have more than 5.000 computers connected. Apart from BOINC based volunteers Grids, Folding@Home has hundreds of thousands volunteer computers connected. Some smaller volunteers Grids use other types of technologies, such as XtremWeb.
In this section we describe some typical volunteer desktop Grids, both from IDGF-SP partners and from other IDGF members, and their related model to involve citizen-scientists.
Figure 8: In August 2010, a new Quasar was discovered on volunteer computers running analysis for the Einstein@Home volunteer Desktop Grid AlmereGrid 6 AlmereGrid is the first CityGrid in the world. It runs a large Volunteer Grid in production and several Grid and Cloud test environments. The main goal of the AlmereGrid volunteer Desktop Grid7 is to involve citizens, companies and organisations in the city of Almere into helping science. The focus on the city means AlmereGrid can participate in events in the city, organises exhibitions, goes to schools, etc. These activities would be difficult to achieve on a broader scale.
6 http://AlmereGrid.nl
7 http://boinc.almeregrid.nl
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ABC@Home8 Mathematics is fun. And everybody can help with finding new mathematical results. That is the main message of ABC@Home. They operate one of the largest Volunteer Desktop Grids in the world, with the goal of working on the last Theorem of Fermat. However, just as important is to get kids involved in this. Hence ABC@Home works together with several organisations to provide a lecture programme and practical mathematical exercises for kids. They can test the mathematics themselves and then see how it works on the Volunteer Desktop Grid.
Figure 9: Press release for an exhibition Figure 10: The starting page for Dutch kids, about eScience and AlmereGrid explaining the mathematics behind (supported by amongst others, the Dutch ABC@Home. It also gives thm the National Railways) possibility to do some so-called ABC-triplet calculations themselves
Charity Engine 9 Charity Engine takes a complete different approach than traditional volunteer grids. With Charity Engine the calculations done are paid for by the organisations that do the calculations. The money earned by Charity Engines is donated to a number of charities.
To even encourage people more to participate, part of the money collected by Charity Engine is used in a lottery amongst people that donate computing time.
Already 400.000 people at Facebook liked Charity Engine that is currently in Beta stage.
8 http://abcathome.com/, http://rekenmeemetabc.nl/
9 http://charityengine.com/
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Figure 11: Charity Engine Beta home page SZTAKI Desktop Grid10 The public SZTAKI Desktop Grid (SZDG) BOINC11-based volunteer project was originally set up in 2005 in order to support applications from various scientific areas. SZDG currently acts as an umbrella project hosting 3 applications from Linguistics, Mathematics and Physics. By now this project has successfully collected more than 90.000 volunteer resources from all over the world delivering approximately 2 TFlop/s. Collecting processing time for scientific applications is not the only goal for SZDG, it also serves as a production-level test infrastructure for the various tools and methods (DC- API, 3GBridge, GenWrapper, etc.) developed by SZTAKI. SZDG can provide valuable feedback for the developers and operators in a scaled-up infrastructure about the behaviour of the tools and methods. EDGeS@home The public EDGeS@home BOINC-based volunteer project with 15,000 computers (hosted by SZTAKI) has the aim to provide computational power for applications heavily used by scientists belonging to the European Grid Infrastructure (formerly to support EGEE users). This project was set up by the EDGeS project (European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 211727) which also developed bridging technology to seamlessly forward jobs from gLite to Boinc for execution. EDGeS@home is basically an umbrella project where workunits mainly comes from the EGI production infrastructure submitted by scientists from various Virtual Organisations.
Other IDGF member operated Desktop Grids LHC@home12 The IDGF-SP project is happy to have one of the driving forces behind LHC@Home actively participating in the project. LHC@Home is operating a Volunteer Desktop Grid with about 100.000 volunteers to help doing calculations for CERN's Large Hadron Collider. CERN also explains LHC to citizens so people know what they crunch on LHC@Home.
10 http://www.desktopgrid.hu/
11 http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
12 http://lhcathome.web.cern.ch/LHCathome
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Renderfarm.fi13 Renderfarm.fi takes the approach that people not only donate computing time, but they can also use it. Renderfarm.fi focuses on rendering computations. It can be sued for scientific rendering, but also other types of community rendering. Renderfarm.fi produced a very nice video introducing volunteer desktop grid computing that has already been viewed on YouTube about 25.000 times.
Figure 12: LHC@Home webpage Figure 13: Big Buck Bunny from Renderfarm.fi explaining Volunteer Desktop Grids for the masses
1.1.4. Private Desktop Grids Universities and research centres do not always have the money to buy number crunching equipment. On the other hand, they do have Desktop computers or other personal equipment. This can be used to set-up a private or ‘local’ desktop grid inside the organisation. This local desktop Grid can run applications with a higher privacy level than public desktop grids. They can also be better planned and managed. These local desktop Grids can also be part of collaborations. The EDGeS bridge technology can then be used to make the connections.
The project will support setting up both local and public desktop grids and connections with European and other e-Infrastructures with Bridge technology by providing training courses, application support and operational support.
A successful example is the University of Westminster Local Desktop Grid14 (WLDG) that connects laboratory PCs of the University of Westminster (London, UK) into a BOINC based Desktop Grid infrastructure. The university is set over four main campuses and some additional smaller locations in Central- and North-West-London each of them offering a variable number of Windows based dual core PCs for teaching purposes. Over 1600 of these machines are connected to the WLDG.
13 http://http://renderfarm.fi/
14 http://wgrass.wmin.ac.uk/index.php/Desktop_Grid:Westminster_Local_DG
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6
1 2 5 4 3
1. New Cavendish Street 576 nodes 2. Marylebone Campus 559 nodes 3. Regent Street 395 nodes 4. Wells Street 31 nodes 5. Little Tichfield Street 66 nodes 6. Harrow Campus 254 nodes Figure 14: The Westminster Local Desktop Grid and the contribution of different campuses The installed desktop Grid software is the Local SZTAKI Desktop Grid package. This is a modified version of the original BOINC installation that focuses on the requirements of non-public DG infrastructures. In these scenarios the resources are controlled centrally (in the case of the WLDG by the central computing services of the university), and there is no need for a public Website or the credit system to attract donors. All computers connect to the desktop grid server using the same user account, and the installation and upgrade of the clients are automatic using Novel ZEN Works objects. The WLDG can be utilized by the university’s researchers to run their computation intensive tasks. It is also connected to Service Grids by the gLite to BOINC Bridge allowing EGI users to run validated applications on the WLDG. Users can access the infrastructure via an easy-to-use generic portal interface, the WS-PGRADE portal. Currently 9 different applications are supported by the WLDG from diverse disciplines, including bio-molecular simulations, 3-D video rendering, x-ray profile analysis and digital signal processing. The following screenshots show the number of work units and performance of the infrastructure during the first half of November 2011.
Figure 15: Total number of work units (WLDG)
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Figure 16: Performance of the infrastructure (WLDG) After a successful half a year’s uptime, a press release had been published on the success of the WLDG. The purpose of this article was to share the opportunity for saving up money with setting up a Private Desktop Grid.
Figure 17: Press release about the WLDG Within the DEGISCO project a number of private Desktop Grids have been set up in ICPC countries such as ChinaGrid, OurGrid. And there are other examples scattered across Europe. For instance the Erasmus Computing Grid 15 collects capacity of 12.000 desktop computers at the Erasmus MC and the neighboring Hogeschool Rotterdam 16. Erasmus MC uses this Grid mainly for genome matching, an application perfectly suited for a Desktop Grid. Buying and maintaining the clusters for making available the same computing capacity would have cost them hundreds of thousands of Euro each year. It could be argued that inside an organization you do not need Volunteer Desktop Grid technology, which is then understood to be equivalent with BOINC, to achieve efficient use of Desktop computers. And, of course, this is true. IDGF is rather agnostic to the type of technology used, as in the IDGF Roadmap, BOINC, XtremWeb, OurGrid and Condor are described. However, it makes sense in advance to consider whether one wants to set up a private desktop grid in an organization and never wants to set up a volunteer desktop grid, which influences the technology choice.
15 http://www.erasmusmc.nl/grid/2605559/?lang=en
16 http://www.hogeschoolrotterdam.nl/
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What we do consider important aspects of private desktop grids is maintainability by the organization, usage should embraced by the organization at all levels, and the private desktop grid should be an integral part of the scientific working environment of the organization's researchers. The preliminary lessons learned can be found in the IDFG Road Map document that has a special road map defined for local desktop grids.
1.1.5. Related predecessor FP7 projects 1.1.5.1. The EDGeS 17project The EDGeS project has successfully set up a production-level distributed computing infrastructure consisting of several Desktop and Service Grid systems. A bridging technology has been developed by the project to connect the two types of Grids. Besides the bridges, EDGeS has also developed an innovative new technology to support the transfer of data from Service Grids to Desktop Grids and its P2P distribution in Desktop Grids. In total, the number of computer nodes included in the EDGeS production infrastructure exceeded 100.000 by November 2009.
Grids supported by the EDGeS technology include Service Grids (EGEE, EELA, SEE-GRID, etc.) and Desktop Grids (SZTAKI Desktop Grid, AlmereGrid, Extremadura School Grid, LAL Desktop Grid, University of Westminster Local Desktop Grid, OurGrid Community, etc.).
EDGeS has successfully attracted the users of several European communities from various disciplines, and ported a large number of applications to its combined Service Grid / Desktop Grid (SG/DG) platform. Applications have been ported using the EDGeS Application Development Methodology (EADM) and its suggested document templates. EDGeS has also successfully setup a user and industry forum to support application providers/users and resource providers/Grid operators.
The EDGeS project has proven that connecting Service and Desktop Grids via bidirectional bridges is a viable solution and established a production infrastructure based on the developed technologies. It has also shown that user communities are keen on utilising this combined infrastructure for running their resource intensive applications.
17 http://edges-grid.eu
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Figure 18: Overview of the 3G Bridge connecting all kinds of Grid middleware an Desktop Grid middleware, allowing seamless flow of jobs in a complex e-science infrastructure Desktop- and Service Grids (SGs) are connected via 3G Bridges. The main bridge (DG->SG) connected 7 selected DGs to the Desktop Grid VO and let them use the spare SG resources.
1.1.5.2. The EDGI 18project EDGI has developed a middleware that consolidates the results achieved in the EDGeS project concerning the extension of Service Grids with Desktop Grids (DGs) in order to support European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) and National Grid Initiative user communities that are heavy users of Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) and require an extremely large number of CPUs and cores. EDGI has gone beyond existing DCIs that are typically cluster Grids and supercomputer Grids, and has extended them with public and institutional Desktop Grids and Clouds. EDGI is integrating software components of ARC, gLite, Unicore, BOINC, XWHEP, 3G Bridge, and Cloud middleware such as OpenNebula and Eucalyptus into SG-DG-Cloud platforms for service provision and as a result EDGI is extending ARC, gLite and Unicore Grids with volunteer and institutional DG systems.
EDGI is developing DG-Cloud bridge middleware with the goal to get instantly available additional resources for DG systems if the application has some QoS requirements that could not be satisfied by the available resources of the DG system. EDGI is improving Desktop Grid middleware (BOINC and XtremWebHEP-E) in order to handle QoS requirements and the SG-DG bridge middleware in order to support data-intensive applications. EDGI is deploying a production infrastructure that integrates ARC-, gLite- and Unicore-based Grids with Desktop Grids based on the bridge middleware developed in EDGI.
The production EDGI infrastructure will also enable the dynamic, on-demand extensions of the connected Desktop Grids with Cloud resources. As such EDGI users can benefit of the versatile and flexible eco-system provided by EDGI. The EDGI production infrastructure will be offered as service for EGI and NGI user communities, and also other volunteer communities. It will also serve as a demonstration for NGIs to extend their eco-system with Desktop Grids and Clouds.
18 http://edgi-project.eu
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1.1.5.3. The DEGISCO 19project In DEGISCO project, there are more than 20 Desktop Grids, and the largest ones are in production phase. The public (volunteer based) Desktop Grids have about 200.000 donors (worker clients) and this number is increasing.
The main objective of the project is to
expand European DCIs into non-EU partner countries by supporting the creation of new Desktop Grids for e-Science in those countries and in Europe and by connecting them to the DCI using the 3G Bridge technology, and support applications on this expanded infrastructure, disseminate, promote and provide training about this expanded infrastructure and its usage. The achievements and results of the 1st year can be summarized as the followings:
. International Desktop Grid Federation (IDGF) has been launched (with EDGI) . Comprehensive Guide for Grid operators . Best practices in application porting and support . Best practices in infrastructure operation . Collaboration with other projects and initiatives . Roadmap 20and recommendations . Helps organisations in deciding on setting up a Desktop Grid . Linking it into eScience infrastructures: Grids (such as EGI), Clouds . Advice on a levels from technical to political . 15 new applications . Hierarchical helpdesks with expert groups . Production, test, development, validation infrastructures To summarize achievements of DEGISCO the table below illustrates the existing Desktop Grids by categorizing them as type, direction of 3G Bridge connection and number of registered hosts within.
19 http://degisco.eu
20 http://desktopgridfederation.org
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Table 1: Categorizing existing Desktop Grids
Registered Registered Infrastructure type DG DG type Connection hosts (end of hosts in 1st year) EDGeS (2010) EDGES@home BOINC SG→DG 12149 5400 EDGES@home XWHEP SG→DG 750 70 SZDG BOINC Both 87666 81000 Ibercivis BOINC DG→SG 41727 31100 UoW Local DG BOINC Both 1881 1881 EDGeS legacy LAL XWHEP Both 1000 993 LRI public XWHEP Both - 21 Production AlmereGrid BOINC DG→SG 4535 2214 AlmereGrid XWHEP SG→DG 10 50 Fundecyt RTE DG BOINC - - 15000 ASGC DG BOINC SG→DG 1062 DEGISCO IMP BOINC DG→SG 1626 UFCG OurGrid Both 270 ISA-RAS BOINC DG→SG 135 Yoyo@home BOINC DG→SG 34550 HUST XWHEP DG→SG <10 NEW Test ISA-RAS BOINC standalone <10 KBTU BOINC SG→DG 70 SZDGr BOINC DG→SG <10 Development IMP BOINC standalone <10 ISA-RAS BOINC standalone <10 KBTU BOINC SG→DG <10 Validation EDGeS legacy UNIZAR-IBERCIVIS BOINC SG→DG <10 As the table shows, the result of the DEGISCO project is a hybrid infrastructure with over 180.000 computers from Desktop Grids and over 2000 CPUs in Desktop Grid VO.
1.1.5.4. Summary of applications ported by the EDGeS, EDGI and DEGISCO projects The table below lists the applications in the EDGI Application Repository 21operating on combined desktop and service grid infrastructures.
Table 2: List of applications from the EDGI Application Repository Application Application Primary user name description community
VISAGE Processing video streams in a Grid environment Correlation Systems Ltd, Israel
ISDEP Integrator of Stochastic Differential Equations in BIFI, Spain, Fusion Community of Plasmas, fusion plasma application EGEE
WISDOM Meta middleware platform to run drug discovery WISDOM user community of EGEE simulations on the Grid
VisIVO Visualisation Interface to the Virtual Observatory Astrophysical Observatory of Catania, Italy
GRIMP Grid-based tool for high-speed analysis of large Erasmus Medical Centre, The scale genome-wide association Netherlands
21 http://dev17-portal.cpc.wmin.ac.uk:8080/repository/
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DASP Designing periodic non-uniform sampling sequences Centre for System Analysis, for digital alias free signal processing University of Westminster, UK
AutoDock Protein carbohydrate docking simulations using School of Biosciences, University of AutoDock Westminster, UK
EMMIL E-marketplace model integrated with logistics International Business School, Hungary
CancerGrid Anti-cancer drug design SME participants in the European CancerGrid Project
CALD Simulate the dynamics of laser devices using a University of Seville, Spain cellular automata based discrete model
Signal& Signal and image processing using WSRF-compliant Karlsruche Institute of Technology, Image web services to distribute Java and Matlab based Germany Processing routines
PLINK Analysis of genotype/phenotype data Atos Origin, Spain
DART Distributed Audio Retrieval Using Triana Cardiff University, UK
Blender 3D Video Rendering using Blender Blender user community
Patient Profiling hospitals based on patient readmission Health and Social Care Modelling Readmission statistics Group, University of Westminster, UK
X-ray Extraction of X-ray diffraction profiles University of Extramadura, Spain
UC-Explorer Understand basic universality classes of non- KFKI Research Institute for equilibrium system Technical Physics and Materials Sciences, Hungary
InterProScan Protein Functional Analysis CNR, Italy
SLinCA Scaling laws in cluster aggregation to detect defect Kurdyumov Institute, Ukraine aggregation in materials
MVP Multi-scale Video Processing Kurdyumov Institute, Ukraine
BinSys Search for binary number systems Eötvös Lóránt University, Hungary
CORSIKA Cosmic Ray Simulation Karlsruche Institute of Technology, Germany
BWA Alignment of DNA sequences Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Guineapig++ Simulate beam-beam interactions in high-energy CNRS, France colliders
AutoDock Molecular docking simulations University of Westminster, UK
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Vina
Tinker Conformer generator for molecular modelling Biological Research Centre (BRC) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Classification R based classification of hospital patients Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
MentalRay Commercial 3D rendering engine University of Westminster, UK
GATE Hadron therapy simulation Creatis CNRS, France
ERVM Environmental Risks of Veterinary Medicines University of Westminster, UK
SIMAP Systems biology simulations Brunel University, UK
Simul8 Commercial simulation package Simul8 Corporation and Brunel University, UK
BNB Grid Generic framework for implementing optimization ISA RAS, Russia algorithms on distributed systems – ISA RAS
CPDynSG City Population Dynamics and Sustainable Growth Kurdyumov Institute, Ukraine
VAST VisuAl and SemanTic image search (and its Larbin HUAZHONG UNIVERSITY OF Crawler component) SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, China
GVSS Web based framework for the virtual screening for Academia Sinica, Taiwan potential drugs
PD-SAT Parallel and Distributed SAT Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences and ISA RAS, Russia
LAMMPS Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Kurdyumov Institute, Ukraine Simulator
SemreX Semantic based large scale literature retrieval and HUAZHONG UNIVERSITY OF browsing SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, China
Reservoir Predicts the behaviour of a reservoir Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil
Cisterns Simulates several scenarios of rain water collecting Universidade Federal de Campina systems Grande, Brazil
MARBS Simulating and helping to predict the water Universidade Federal de Campina demanded by the soil Grande, Brazil
EPANET Plan and improve a system's hydraulic performance Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil
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PHOG Pyramid histogram of gradients, (as part of the HUAZHONG UNIVERSITY OF Patent Retrieval system SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, China
SUDOKU Sudoku solver Academia Sinica, Taiwan
1.1.6. Green aspects The reduction of energy consumption is a concern for all industries. It is also a major issue for computational modeling, whether supercomputers, computing-clusters, or desktop grids are used.
The Desktop Grids community should address the energy issue for three reasons. First, the energy requirements of Desktop Grids grow linearly with the number of participating nodes. As a result, for large grids, the total power usage and energy cost is considerable. Research organizations must therefore have an estimate of this cost in order to compare the advantages of (private) Desktop Grids to other solutions.
The energy costs of volunteer computing networks are not billed to the research organization. However, successful projects may come under criticism for the environmental footprint of their work. Volunteer computing networks should therefore take the energy issue seriously and reduce its impact where possible. And, lastly, the energy question is important to the volunteers who would like to participate in scientific projects but who fear the impact on their electricity bills.
A support project for Desktop Grids can therefore not ignore the energy question.
As part of the DEGISCO project Green aspects of Desktop Grids have been investigated22. Seven core strategies have been identified as a collection of best practices, techniques, and policies. These are still at a qualitative level, and more collection of information is needed in this area.
The strategies are:
1. Ambient metrics based Green optimization
2. Cool strategy: avoid air-conditioning use
3. Energy profiling of applications
4. CPU speed steps
5. Exploitation of natural ambient conditions
6. Time-of-day dependent energy tariffs
22 Schott, Bernhard and Emmen, Ad: “Degisco Green Methodologies in Desktop Grids” in International Multiconference on Computer Science and Information Technology http://proceedings2010.imcsit.org/ ISSN 1896-7094; ISBN 978-83-60810-27-9 IEEE Catalogue Number CFP1064E-CDR http://proceedings2010.imcsit.org/pliks/191.pdf, [Online] 01-05-2011
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7. Management of unused resources in local Desktop Grid
1.1.6.1. Ambient metrics based Green optimization In order to tune IDGF connected Desktop-Grids towards saving of energy, suitable configurations and parameters are to be identified enabling the Desktop-Grid client to intelligently select adequate workload. A regular PC almost doubles its power consumption from idle 160W to 300W under full CPU load. BOINC general preferences allow specifying that computation consumes a certain portion of the machine, e.g. 50% of CPU time, by this reducing the heat dissipation.
Ambient temperature measurement or at least estimation could be used to control and potentially prevent download of workload items if the PC and its environment are too hot for comfortable or safe operations. The measurement and observance of ambient conditions, mainly temperature, is essential for several advanced Green Methodologies, too.
1.1.6.2. Cool strategy: avoid air-conditioning use Desktop-Grids are the real Green Grids: lower energy density than clusters results in less energy wasted for cooling. However, this may no longer be true if air-conditionings are used to assure proper operation of Desktops. According to the principles of thermodynamics, the energy consumption by air-conditionings for cooling range from 30% to >200% (PUE: 1,3..>3) of the energy dissipated by the IT device. The wide range is a direct result of the cool-reservoir temperature the heat pump can utilize to get rid of the heat. The prime advice to configure Green-Desktop-Grids: avoid air-conditioning use.
Selection criteria for the “maximum temperature” as described above could be that temperature that would just not yet trigger the start of the local air-conditioning.
In case the use of air-conditioning is unavoidable, the recommendation to participate in Desktop-Grids depends:
If the additional workload by Desktop-Grids would cause proportional air-conditioning power consumption, a change of strategy should be considered. Maybe by restricting the acceptance of workload to night times would help, configurable in the BOINC client settings and preferences.
If the air-conditioning is in full power use anyway – like in tropical ambient – the additional heat dissipation during compute load processing may not impact the total energy balance too much. Still the additional heat dissipation can be controlled as described above.
Example: light building structures with poor thermal insulation and continuously running air- conditionings are de-facto standard in sub-tropical and tropical regions globally. If we assume a 3,5kW air-conditioning (2-3 room flat, small house) to run non-stop in order to keep the ambient temperature 15°C below the 40°C outside, additional heat dissipation of a standard office PC (60W idle, 120Watts fully loaded) would raise the ambient temperature by ~1°C (assumed 50% efficiency of the air-conditioning). The 120 Watts compare to the 100W approximate basal metabolic rate + 20-40W brain activity of the human body – so the user of the PC will raise the ambient temperature for another 1°C while awake and thinking. The raise in room- or ambient-temperature is minimal since the thermal balance in this example is dominated by the heat flow through the building structure. Massively higher impact on the room-temperature is caused by cooking activities (in the multi-kW range).
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1.1.6.3. Energy profiling of applications Different applications and codes consume more or less CPU at any given time, resulting in different energy consumption per time interval, specific energy profiles. They behave differently in raising machine and ambient temperature. According to our findings within the IDGF available pool of applications, these could be classified accordingly with a heat index as +, ++ and +++ for example. We refrain from using “green”, “orange”, and “red” at this point: The +++ index marks an application that makes maximum use of a given machine, is raising its temperature, but finishes the computation quickly. This behaviour may total in less “energy consumed”/computation than the application which creates less heat/time but runs longer. Still heat/time is an important parameter from a green operations point of view. As PC owners can select the project and by this the application they want to contribute to, they can take into account their specific knowledge of local operations conditions, primarily how much additional heat they can accept. If energy profiling of applications does not supply sufficient control range, the BOINC native method of setting general preferences to specify CPU% utilization may be used.
1.1.6.4. CPU Speed Steps A similar effect could be achieved by exploiting processor speed steps, avoiding additional preparation work on the application side. Current processors provide multiple steps (8-16) for CPU speed, thus controlling energy consumption. Gruber and Keller discuss the use of “SpeedStep” among other methods in order to use the minimal CPU frequency to run an application at full memory bandwidth. Different from the application, the OS and tools installed at the PC are under control of the Desktop-Grid contributor, placing the management of methods like “SpeedStep” into the volunteers’ hand.
1.1.6.5. Exploitation of natural ambient conditions IDGF investigates another completely independent green strategy: exploitation of natural ambient conditions. A specific project advantage facilitates the aggregation of partners from various different geographies, a fact that allows benefiting from differences in regional weather situations in order to save energy. Workload indexed as “+++” may systematically be offered to contributors located in low temperature areas while those in sunny summer weather will be offered to contribute for “+” workload.
Recruiting regions with opposite weather conditions allows counteracting actual weather conditions. E.g. if there is only “+++”-workload-type available today, Copenhagen may be preferred over Zaragoza. IDGF members from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Spain confirmed the weather conditions reported on “world weather” as already averaged – the peak temperatures exceed both into heights and lows significantly.
1.1.6.6. Time-of-day or weather dependent energy tariffs The value and price of electrical energy is changing according to the conditions of generation as well as by changing consumption. Accordingly, the tariffs for electricity are changing over time of day and year. While in Germany electricity prices are high during lunch time, in Kazakhstan the energy prices go up in the evening – in both cases dependent on consumption.
Energy prices at the Spot markets vary depending on excess production capacity. Since wind energy can deliver significant amounts of energy, these spot market prices can even turn negative.
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To improve the energy cost situation and to take advantage of excess Green electricity, advice could be given to contributors how to configure their Desktop-Grid-Clients to prefer workload during low tariff times
1.1.6.7. Management of unused resources in a local Desktop-Grid A seventh Green strategy can be reported from the OUR-Grid project, presented e.g. at OGF30, Brussels: Lesandro Ponciano and Francisco Brasileiro have focussed on sleeping- and wake-up-strategies for Desktop-Grid-Clients from various modes like off, suspend, or hibernate, and the according impact on responsiveness of a campus Desktop-Grid. Wake-up- strategies like WOL (Wake on LAN) are usually not applicable for Internet scale deployments but work well in local networks.
Energy resource use evaluation in detail SONY evaluated that energy reductions of up to 70% are possible when the computation is done as a background task on laptops and when the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) of modern CPUs is used23. This high reduction in power consumption requires that the operating system gives applications control over the CPU frequency. When this support is absent, SONY found that it is still possible to reduce the energy by more than 40% by programmatically slowing down the computation.
Energy techniques such as the slow background computing require further testing to be deployed on a larger basis. This testing can only be performed in close collaboration with infrastructure providers and volunteers.
Besides testing, the Desktop Grid community should follow-up the technological evolutions that shape the energy question, including technologies that stem from research work (energy- aware compilation and/or parallelization techniques, hardware virtualization), and to provide best practice guidelines.
The grid community must also anticipate the shift from desktop machines to laptops and mobile devices. The stagnating performance of single CPU cores makes high-end mobile and embedded devices increasingly attractive. This opens up new opportunities for "Desktop" Grids and we should analyse what benefits these new platforms bring, including the green and financial aspects.
1.1.7. International Desktop Grid Federation Since mid 2010, the International Desktop Grid Federation (IDGF) is a focal point for discussions about and experience exchange of Desktop Grid computing and related technologies. Today IDGF has about 35 organisational members and about 175 persons as members.
This unique initiative originated in Europe, but there are also members in Asia and in the America's.
The International Desktop Grid Federation is a member organisation: it provides a platform for collaboration between members, and it provides services for its members.
23 P. Hanappe, "Low-energy volunteer computing". BOINC Workshop, Hannover, Germany, August 2011.
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Membership
What type of organisations and persons are member of IDGF?
Organisations operating a Desktop Grid and would like to share experiences with operators, get support and training. Organisations having a lot of Desktop computers, and would like to make better use of them. Developers of computation programmes for Desktop Grids. Organisations that want to install a volunteer Desktop Grid, and wants to know how to attract volunteers. Persons interested in further developing Desktop Grid and Desktop Cloud technology. You would like to integrate a Desktop Grid with other Service Grids (for instance based on gLite, KnowARC or Unicore). Organisations with large computational needs, and wants to know whether Desktop Grids could be used. Persons and organisations that care about the environment and want to know how Desktop Grids can contribute to a Green ICT infrastructure with less power consumption. Services
The Federation offers several services for its members. As said, the main goal is to facilitate exchange of information between members, and enable collaboration amongst members. This includes support for:
Meetings, workshops and conferences: where you can meet and discuss with other members. This enables you to discuss with others about the issues and benefits of operating Desktop Grids, developing applications for it, or use them. Training sessions and tutorials. An extensive set of tutorials is available from introductory level to advanced tutorials on integrating Desktop Grids into existing distributed computing environments. There are regularly workshops and tutorials. Technical expert support in operation Desktop Grids and programming for Desktop Grids. Experts are available (from the supporting projects) that can help you with specific issues. Technical expert support in connecting Desktop Grids with other Grids, Clouds and other distributed computing infrastructures. Web portal and information centre. This includes reference material available in several languages, and a Forum with messages boards on Desktop Grid topics. Certification services. When you operate a Desktop Grid or develop applications, you want to let your users and volunteers know you produce secure products or services that meet high quality standards. IDGF can certify your service or product.
Organisation The legal structure of the IDGF is based on a Dutch Foundation. It is designed to enable collaboration between members (called “participants” in the legal structure) while maintaining good formal checks & balances for a healthy financial management. It is expected to become a legal entity in December 2011.
1.1.8. The Desktop Grids for eScience Road Map The Desktop Grids for eScience Road Map has been developed during the first IDGF year by DEGISCO. The Road Map contains two parts: the Management part explains why one should want to set-up a Desktop Grid (and integrate it with the e-Science Infrastructure. The Detailed Part tells the readers how they can do that, covering all aspects, including technical, legal and communication details. It has proven a valuable communication tool. During IDGF-SP we will update the Road Map twice, following the next process:
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The road map creation process will include the following steps:
Update the list of elements that must be part of a road map. Identifying new stakeholders outside the project. Summarising existing related road maps and white papers, such as the e-IRG road map and white papers, ESFRI, NESSI, EGI and SIENA materials. Road maps and white papers from ICPC countries. Setting up a new editorial board and list of contributors. Decide on the main chapters and main editors for that chapter and structure of the road map. The chapters will be updated or written in a number of iterations. The draft version of updated road map will be edited for consistency. The draft version of updated road map will then be open for comments and consultation. Especially stakeholders' comments will be actively encouraged, but also comments from others are welcomed. The editorial board will identify the parts in the draft that need to be updated. Either the chapter editor or the overall editor will then do the required updates. The new versions of the road map will be ready around Month 12 and Month 24. The Road Map will build on the information and experiences gathered in WP2 -WP5 (Hence the WPs deliver best practices and Green/Financial aspects reports 2 - 3 months before each new release of the Road Map.
1.1.9. Future of volunteer computing and IDGF-SP approach Despite the major successes of volunteer Desktop Grids during the past years, there are still some problems to be solved. Especially in Europe, Desktop Grids are now seen as an integral part of the scientific e-Infrastructure. This is one of the successes. And although, in Europe there are still some isolated Desktop Grids, most recently started volunteer desktop Grids in Europe are started by IDGF members. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of the European projects EDGeS, EDGI and DEGISCO, there is today also a large catalogue of applications that have been ported to Desktop Grid embedded e-Infrastructures. This is another success. A third success is IDGF community, also initiated in Europe with its collaborations and large collection of middleware agnostic training and technical material.
We should stress that in this area, during the past years, Europe has clearly taken the lead in the area, while there are strong collaborations worldwide.
So what are the problems that still remain? Actually there is one problem and one opportunity. The problem is that during the past years the number of volunteers contributing computing time seems to flatten of worldwide24. The opportunity is that it has proven that within (scientific) organisations, idle computers in for instance classrooms can be used in a private desktop grid. In this section we concentrate on the problem of flattening numbers of volunteers. There seem to be three main reasons why the number of Volunteers flattens:
1. The BOINC volunteer community is very much dominated by technology oriented persons. Becoming part of this community is not appealing for citizens that only want to contribute to science and are not interested in technology.
The IDGF-SP approach is to design targeted campaigns towards wider audiences and to set- up a network of “ambassadors”. Getting desktop grid worker software as part of regular home
24 ‘Volunteer Computing – The ultimate cloud’ (Crossroads, Spring 2010) - David P. Anderson,
Page 30 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action computers will also be pursued: Sony Europe plans to pre-install BOINC on all new Sony VAIOs, starting in Q4 2012.
2. Initial media coverage is not followed up and does not lead to a sustained higher number of volunteers. This is partly due to the fact that a number of large projects are operated by scientists with limited skills in communicating technical topics to a wider audience. IDGF-SP will help the IDGF members with creating material and designing campaigns. Also we will build on SZTAKI's WEB2GRID project experiences in integrating Desktop Grids with Facebook.
3. Regularly questions arise on the Green aspects and efficiency aspects of Desktop Grids. Big data centres and supply companies claim that only they can provide energy efficient computing. Some environmental aware organisations claim that computers should be turned off as much as possible. This creates confusion amongst citizens. Hence the IDGF-SP approach is to build on the experience and data gathered on Green Desktop Grids in the DEGISCO project, on the IDGF Road Map on Desktop Grids for e-Science and on Sony's experience with studying the efficiency of the ClimatePrediction.net volunteer desktop Grids. This work will be continued and lead to reports and data on efficient use of Desktop Grids.
1.1.10. Summary of background and principles The volunteer and private desktop grids are getting more and more accepted as part of the ecosystem of distributed infrastructures. EDGeS (2008-2010), DEGISCO (2010-2012), and EDGI (2010-2012) projects paved the way for a strong lively community: International Desktop Grid Federation (IDGF).
There are many active Volunteer Computing projects and initiatives including e.g. Einstein@home and Citizens Cyberscience Centre, etc., and some citizen science projects with scope on education such as GLOBAL Excursion.
But:
Still not enough focus on volunteers and support to get more of them involved. Volunteers around the world in BOINC communities are mainly ‘techies’, regular citizens are hardly addressed. Desktop and volunteer Grids are still missing part of the regular ICT departments of scientific organisations. With the International Desktop Grid Federation (IDGF) we created a sustainable structure that helps promoting the use of Desktop Grids for eScience applications; the embedding of Desktop Grids in the eScience eco-system, and narrowing the gap between science and citizens.
IDGF has over 35 organisational members and 175 individual members -- is a lively community that makes big steps forward.
As part of IDGF discussions and collaborations we came across areas that need special attention:
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As was noted by BOINC architect David Anderson at the IDGF workshop in Hannover25, the he number of volunteers (citizen scientists) that donate computing time is not increasing anymore. The community does not seem to be able to capitalize on the (scientific) successes. IDGF (currently supported by EDGI and DEGISCO) has seen on the other hand the success of new local Desktop Grids inside organisations. This broadens the technology and support base for Desktop Grids in general.
Other initiatives and projects (e.g. Citizens Cyberscience Centre, Einstein@home) are targeting to reach the ‘critical mass’ of users and/or volunteers also do not seem to reach new volunteers despite the wide attention in the press and on television, that did increase the number of volunteers for a short while. In the long run the projects seemed to be lacking of tools and a supporting community to keep the volunteers attention focused and thus increasing the number of citizen scientists in the long term. Also the efforts seem to be still scattered/isolated. The effort put into keeping up with new technologies is vanishing.
From the Desktop Grids point of view, tracking technology changes is crucial too.
The combined and harmonized efforts of the partners and new strategies to be developed jointly in the IDGF-SP will help tackle the problems concerning the number of volunteers/scientific users.
Obviously the question rises. Would not IDGF and its members be able to solve these issues without the support of IDGF-SP? The answer is simple. Perhaps in the long term, IDGF could. However, IDGF-SP not only would speed up the process considerably, it would also allow the IDGF community to break out of its still very technology dominated approach and be able to leverage on now incidental and scattered efforts and successes in attracting an binding large numbers of volunteer computers.
25 http://desktopgridfederation.org/8th-idgf-workshop
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1.1.11. Project Objectives
The main objective of the project can be summarised as follows:
Involve and engage in long-term significantly more citizens and new communities in the volunteer and private (campus-wide or enterprise) Distributed Computing Infrastructures by supporting the rapid creation, efficient operation, and dynamic expansion of this type of DCIs for e-Science. Coordinate and synchronise the dissemination and support activities of major European stakeholders of volunteer and Desktop Grids with focus on the International Desktop Grid Federation.
A number of more detailed objectives can be derived from this main objective: 1. Significantly increase the number of citizens, companies and other organisation that donate computing time to science through desktop Grids. 2. Strengthen the collaboration of Desktop Grid operators and other DCI operators with a regard to producing material, portals and procedures to get/keep citizens involved. Exchanging experience, reusing each other’s successes, and set up coordinated European or worldwide campaigns to inform and attract citizen volunteers. 3. Maintain the support infrastructure established and/or operated by IDGF Portal and collaboration environment Certification services Certified services directory (including certified - validated - application repository) Infrastructure related support tools (helpdesks, monitors) and methods (competency matrix, expert groups) Key infrastructure elements; application repositories, bridges 4. Promote Desktop Grids usage inside scientific organisations with special focus on university Desktop Grids. Goal is to increase the usage, knowledge and acceptance of Desktop Grid technology in universities and research institutes. 5. Track technology changes/evolution and adopt them in the technical support and dissemination mechanisms as well: green aspects, clouds for QoS in Desktop Grids, etc.
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1.1.12. Quality metrics Table 3: Quality metrics No Metric Target Target Baseline26/comments after 12 after 24 months months
MET1 Number of new >35,000 >85,000 0 / New users are those, who volunteers as users have not been registered to BOINC or involved in other volunteer computing projects before
MET2 Number of volunteering > 50,000 > 100,000 0 / New computers are those host computers that have not been registered to BOINC or involved in other volunteer computing projects before
MET2 Number of new private 5 10 0 desktop grids
MET3 Number of downloads 1000 2000 0 of Green and financial studies and Road Maps
MET4 Satisfaction of IDGF >3,5 >4 - / On a scale of 1-5 members with IDGF-SP services
MET5 Number of newly 10 20 0 / Newly certified certificated applications applications are those that have been IDGF certified for the first time
MET6 Number of new 2 5 0 / new disciplines are those disciplines27 supported that have been supported for by the project the first time through IDGF
MET7 Number of new 2 5 0 / countries that have been regions28 with supported supported for the first time organisation(s) through IDGF
26 Baseline reflecting the current status as of Sept 2012 will be given in the progress report.
27 UNESCO nomenclature for fields of science and technology (4-digit version)
28 Regions: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/atlas2007/index_en.htm
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MET8 Improvement of 10% 20% -/ Based on the previous year geographical coverage data in terms of citizen scientists’ location
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The following table list the domains requested in the Work programme, and how IDGF-SP will address these.
Table 4: Summary of domains mentioned in the Work programme of INFRA-2012-3.3 Domains mentioned in the Work programme How the project addresses this
(a) Developing strategies and/or establishing This project addresses specifically 'actions coordination structures, e.g. aiming at coordination between e- infrastructure operators'. It will do this by • to support the European exa-scale computing strengthen the relationship amongst research community in international efforts on Desktop Grid operators that are member of the development of future extreme-performance IDGF. computing systems It will also support the cooperation • for extremely large or highly distributed and between ICT departments of research heterogeneous scientific databases (including organisations and universities to become service architectures, applications and part of the global eScience infrastructure, standardisation) in order to manage the by installing interoperable Desktop Grids. upcoming data deluge The project will also continue to • actions aiming at coordination between e- strengthen the already existing relationship infrastructure operators between Desktop Grid operators and the EGI community.
(d) Dissemination of results and success The project will disseminate the success stories of European e-Infrastructure projects stories of the previous e-Infrastructure to a wider audience. Coordination and projects EDGeS, EDGI and DEGISCO. community-building to engage citizen- This includes success stories on new scientists with the e-Science activities and scientific results, successes of deploying exploit the e-Infrastructures. new Desktop Grids and their integration into the EGI e-Infrastructure. Successes of porting and deploying ported applications.
In particular the project will also disseminate the results of the EDGI project in creating more reliable Desktop Grids by using Clouds to increase Quality Assurance of Volunteer Desktop Grids (SpeQULOS).
The main focus of the project is, however, on coordination and community building to engage more citizens in e-Science activities by letting them donate computing time to science in a volunteer Desktop Grid. Volunteers are able to choose from different science projects, interact with the scientist: get feedback. If results are specifically achieved on their
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PC they also get a special mention on the scientific project web site.
The project will increase significantly the number of volunteers contributing computing time to science. It will do so by joint awareness campaigns and by setting up communities of “volunteer ambassadors”.
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B1.2
B1.3 Quality and effectiveness of the support mechanisms and associated work Plan
B1.3.1 Overall strategy and general description
The Workplan is designed to maximise knowledge transfer to EU and ICPC countries with the aim of installing local infrastructures connected to European e-infrastructures and with applications ported to the combined infrastructure. Hence we have defined the following work packages:
WP1 Management
Management of the project is critical to success. Managing partners with a very diverse background is a project specific challenge, covered appropriately. Further description of the management can be found in the implementation part (Section 2.)
WP2 Infrastructure support
This work package is designed to technically support the setting up and operation of new desktop grids. Both private desktop grids, inside organisations such as universities and research institutes, and public volunteer desktop grids will be supported. This work package will provide and support the related software distributions such as the BOINC distributions and new virtualised solutions, and will assist with their installation and the provision of technical support during their operation based on helpdesks.
The work package will also provide technical support for connecting these new desktop grid infrastructures to European e-Infrastructures through the installation of and the provision of operational support for DCI Bridges. Special focus will be on the measurement of energy consumption in co-operation with WP5. The work package gives priory support for the infrastructures which are intended to host applications with citizen-scientists (WP3).
WP3 Addressing citizens
Increasing the number of volunteers donating computing time to science will be the most important objective of this work package. It will do so by helping the Desktop Grids from the project partners and of IDGF members, by developing joint (between the Desktop Grid operators) campaigns, setting up a network of citizen scientists as (local) help and “ambassadors”. It will strengthen the relationship with other citizen science and science promoting organisations.
WP3 will also maintain and edit the portal (localizable in more languages) and produce supporting materials to promote Desktop Grids amongst citizens.
The Work Package will also take care of the dissemination activities of the project itself.
WP3 will use the infrastructure provides by WP2. It will use the information and data produced by WP5. It will collaborate with WP4 on common promotional activities and on setting up hybrid private/volunteer Desktop Grids.
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WP4 Addressing scientific organisations
WP4 is designed to create awareness amongst scientific organisations, and also amongst user communities and application developers representing these organisations. The work package will also disseminate project results and provide training for the above communities.
One of the most important objectives of WP4 is to support scientific organisations in setting up local desktop grid infrastructures. These infrastructures could be utilised by local researchers for running scientific applications, and could also increase the awareness amongst students and employees of these organisations regarding the importance and applicability of desktop grid technology. This latter could lead to a new generation of donors (or “citizen scientists”) for public desktop grid infrastructures
WP4 will support scientific end-users and application developers in developing, testing, validating and operating their applications on the production infrastructure. The application porting process will utilise the IDGF Application Development Methodology and the Application Porting Infrastructure operated by WP2. Following the successful testing and (if required) validation phases, WP4 will support the user community in deploying and operating the application on the production infrastructure. WP4 will operate a central IDGF helpdesk and co-ordinate the operation of local 2nd tier helpdesks to support the user communities on a daily basis.
WP4 will also organize training courses for different audiences (end-users, application developers and system administrators, future trainers, and will maintain and publish IDGF training materials.
WP5 Analysis
WP5 covers two aspects that are crucial to the further development of desktop grids: the green and the financial aspect. The work package includes studies to obtain more detailed information about the actual energy consumptions of Desktop Grids so that fact-based comparisons can be made with other computing infrastructures. We will also evaluate technologies that may reduce this energy further and, possibly, integrate energy-saving techniques into the Desktop Grid infrastructure. In particular, we will test the slow background computing technique proposed by SONY. WP5 also includes the performance/energy evaluation of new platforms, such as mobile devices, and analyze whether these devices can improve the footprint of Desktop Grids. WP5 also covers an analysis of the financial aspects of Desktop Grids. We will gather data and build simplified models to evaluate the financial benefits of Desktop Grids. The analysis of the green and the financial aspects are essential prerequisites to convince organizations and volunteers to participate in Desktop Grids.
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1.1.13. B1.3.2 Timing of work packages and their components
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PERT diagram
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B2. IMPLEMENTATION
B 2.1 Management structure and procedures
In the following, we describe the organisation, management and decision making structures of the project. The overall management structure of the project is depicted in the next figure.
Figure 19: The overall management structure of the project To ensure the successful execution of the project in all its phases, a clear organisational structure shall be installed for all administrative, technical and financial aspects of project management. These requirements are best met by a functional structure. Overall administrative management and technical management are separated, following proven management approaches which have been successfully applied in FP6 and FP7 projects.
The Quality System of Coordinating Partner has been certified according to the ISO 2001 standard since 1997, which defines the planning and implementation of the project management and the research and development processes.
The following management roles and related decision structures, tasks and responsibilities are defined:
Project Management Board (PMB) Project Coordinator (PC) Project office Quality Assurance Manager Project Technical Board Work Package Leader (WP leader)
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The Project Management Board (PMB) globally supervises the overall project. It includes one representative with voting right for each partner. The PMB will be chaired by the Project Coordinator. The Project Management Board will be in charge of decisions on the general project strategies within the framework of the contract, revisions and amendments to the project workplan.
After an initial meeting timely after the project’s start, the Project Management Board shall meet at regular approximately six-month intervals. Additional meetings shall be summoned at the request of its chairperson or upon written request of one of its members. PMB meetings can be held in person or by electronic means. Voting shall be simple majority. Except when it directly concerns one partner. Then unanimity minus one is required. The PMB procedures will be further detailed in the Consortium agreement. The PMB shall also deal with Ethical Issues if these arise.
The Project Technical Board (PTB) is responsible for the overall day-to-day project operational management and for defining and monitoring the implementation of the technical objectives. The Technical Board will consist of the Project Coordinator (who chairs the Technical Board) and the Work Package Leaders.
The Project Technical Board organises weekly online meetings to monitor the progress of the project, to decide on any corrective or planning actions required to keep the project on track and in focus. The Project Technical Board has the following roles:
Ensuring that the technical objectives of the IDGF-SP project are achieved;
Managing the timely completion and the quality of the technical deliverables;
Solving technical issues;
Reporting progress and deviations to the PMB.
The Project Technical Board members can be assisted by any WP member that is working on the tasks discussed in a meeting.
Project Coordinator (PC)
The Project Coordinator (Robert Lovas, MTA SZTAKI) is appointed by the Coordinating Contractor. The responsibilities of the project coordinator include the overall management of the project, the supervision of the submission of reports and deliverables, according to the Grant Agreement, including the provision of quarterly reports to the Commission and general liaison and communication with the EC, as well as monitoring the progress of the project according to the workplan, time schedule, deliverables and milestones established in the Grant Agreement with the EC. Furthermore, the Project Coordinator with assistance of the Project Office shall oversee the budget and report major deviations from the agreed workplan to the Project Management Board. This role will also include relations with all partners, in particular conflict resolution, and chairmanship of the Project Technical Board.
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Quality Assurance Manager
The Quality Assurance Manager will ensure the quality of work within the project. Please refer to Quality Management. The Quality Manager is a member of the PMB to facilitate communication directly with the Work Package Leaders in terms of quality of the different processes and project activities.
Work Package Leader
For each work package a Work Package Leader will be appointed who will be responsible for the management of the work package including its tasks. Their responsibilities cover the co- ordination of the work in the relevant package, including the organisation of technical meetings as needed, reporting the work performed in the relevant package to the Technical Board, preparation and submission for the draft of the technical deliverables, to be approved according to the QA process and monitoring the progress of the package and reporting major deviation from the project workplan. The Work Package Leader will report about status of WP as required.
Quality Management
The Quality Manager is responsible for setting up and monitoring quality procedures, and reporting on them in the project. The Quality procedures of the project are based on the quality system of coordinator, which is certified according to the ISO 2001 standard and audited yearly by an international accredited third party. The Quality Manager will distribute the Project Handbook of Quality Management and Progress Monitoring Plan.
The project handbook will contain descriptions of
deliverable production, review and submission procedure quality control procedures organisational structure and decision scheme of the project reporting procedures, frequency and format specific responsibilities within the project communication procedures corrective actions exception control conflict resolution document procedures, standards and control issue control for documents
Communication and Reporting
The project will provide a comprehensive communication infrastructure. It includes a protected Internet based server for document management, communication platforms like fora and list servers for e-mailing to partners. In addition video conferences and groupware tools for electronic cooperation and conferencing will be employed as needed.
The project coordinator will report to the Commission regularly compiling and sending interim reports, periodic reports (activity and management reports) and the deliverables to be achieved during the project. Each Work Package Leader and the Quality Assurance Manager will deliver required inputs for reporting to EC, especially for the Periodic Reports.
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All Project Partners will report every 3 months about the activities they carried out.
On communications, the coordinator will check and follow the best practices provided in http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/participating/communication-best-practices_en.html. In particular:
• Relations to media
• A good web presence. With, at least: a) a ".eu" domain name b) a project logo
Management of Knowledge and Intellectual Property
Since the results of the project are meant to be in favour of the whole European constituency, IDGF-SP will disseminate all its results within current data protection requirements. With only minor exceptions like progress reports, and dissemination plans, all formal deliverables will be of the “public” type.
Concertation activites
The project will actively participate in the concertation activities and meetings related with the e-Infrastructures area. The objective is to optimise synergies between projects by providing input and receiving feedback from working groups addressing activities of common interest (e.g. from clusters and projects). Projects may offer advice and guidance and receiving information relating to 7th Framework programme implementation, standardisation, policy and regulatory, EU Member States initiatives or relevant international initiative.
Significant risk, contingency plans
The main risks of project management are that the objectives of the project are not achieved according to the grant agreement on time and in quality, problems with resources may arise, partners could leave the consortium, and there is no common understanding to make decisions.
As part of the quality plan of the project a risk plan will be developed, which identifies and eliminates the risks of the project in detail.
Table 5: Identified risks Risk Chance it Potential Mitigation happens impact Support/dissemination will Medium High We build the consortium with partners not be efficient among the (involved in WP3), which have very divers citizens due to the multi- approach to reaching citizens. We expect language and multi-cultural from these experiences we can design an background or other reasons. effective strategy. We will evaluate the results of our strategy on a regular basis, and adapt it, when it does not have the expected result.
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Risk Chance it Potential Mitigation happens impact Not enough interest from Low Medium Key partners in WP4, such as UoW and scientific user communities MTA SZTAKI, have extended experience to utilise Desktop/volunteer from other FP7 projects, and more intensive Grids. collaboration with some ongoing projects (such as SCI-BUS with 27 user communities involved) can help. These partners are also operating application support services (W- GRASS and GASuC) to more actively search for and engage with potential users if it becomes necessary. There are good relationships build during the past years with EGI. Not enough interest from Low Medium Results during the first year of IDGF, where scientific user communities with the help of DEGISCO and EDGI a and research institutes to set number of new Desktop Grids have been up new Desktop Grids. set-up have led to advices, laid down in the Road Map that will be used to encourage organisations to set-up new Desktop Grids. If our strategy does not lead to enough new Desktop Grids during the first year, we will use the results of the studies of WP5 as part of a new approach strategy. We will adapt the Road Map accordingly and use that in the new strategy to approach organisations that could potentially set-up Desktop Grids. Not enough support from the High Medium To mitigate this risk a bottom up approach management of scientific will be suggested by the project. This will institutions for the start with a relatively small deployment that deployment of local Desktop does not require top management support, Grid infrastructures and will gradually rolled out to the whole institution as the benefits are demonstrated. We will however at all times have an updated Road Map available that can be used to provide management with arguments to deploy a Desktop Grid campus wide. Allocated resources to Medium High The project will apply an increasingly support scientific user decentralised approach to mitigate this risk. communities (porting, The certification of application developers validation, user support) will and validators, and the 2 tier user support not be sufficient resulting in structure (with IDGF forum being part of the these communities loosing first tier) are the guarantees for this. This way interest. an increasingly larger amount of activities will be delegated to the communities themselves.
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B 2.2 Beneficiaries Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia Szamitastechnikai es Automatizalasi Kutato Intezet (MTA SZTAKI) - Coordinator MTA SZTAKI is one of the largest IT research institutes in the Central European region with 300+ employees. The institute plays a leading role in Grid computing related research, development, and training in Hungary as the funding member of Hungarian Grid Competence Centre (2003), as the member of Coregrid (2004-2008) and S-CUBE (2008-2012) Eluropean Networks of Excellence, and the founder of Grid Application Support Center, Budapest (2007).
The mission of the Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems (LPDS) in MTA SZTAKI is two-fold. The first goal is to provide high-level services together with customizable scientific gateways (P-GRADE Grid Portal, gUSE) for the most widespread Grid infrastructures and platforms, such as gLite, Globus, and BOINC. The second main aim is to offer middleware (SZTAKI Desktop Grid) and technologies for interoperability (3G Bridge). The laboratory has been working in all phases of EGEE/EGI. With the organized international trainings and summer schools in several projects (EGEE, ICEAGE, CoreGrid, SEE-GRID, EDGES, DEGISCO, SHIWA) LPDS provides knowledge transfer, and targets new user communities from science and industry. The laboratory has long running experience in establishing and operating production-level Grid infrastructures: national (HUNGRID), regional (SEE-GRID), global (EDGeS, DEGISCO); training (GILDA), and application specific (CANCERGRID).
The institute is ISO 9001:2000 certified, and has management experiences in national projects (SuperGrid, HAGRID, WEB2GRID) and in EU projects; as the coordinator of EDGeS, EDGI, DEGISCO, SHIWA, and SCI-BUS consortia, and as a WP leader of several FP7 projects (GLOBAL Excursion, agINFRA) and from FP5 (DATAGRID, CANCERGRID, SEE-GRID, etc).
Role in the project In the project MTA SZTAKI is the coordinator and is leading WP1and WP2. Main roles are management and supporting infrastructures.
Short CV of Key Personnel Prof. Dr. Peter Kacsuk is the Head of the LPDS at MTA SZTAKI. He received his professor title from the Hungarian President in 1999 and the Doctor of Academy degree (DSc) from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2001. He was a part-time full professor at the University of Miskolc and at the Eötvös Lóránd University of Science, Budapest. He has been a part- time full professor at the Cavendish School of Computer Science of the University of Westminster since 2001. He served as visiting scientist at various universities around the world. He has published two books, two lecture notes and more than 200 scientific papers on parallel computing and Grid computing. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Grid Computing (Springer) and been active in 40 national and international research projects. He played key roles in international projects such as: EU DataGrid, EU GridLab, EU CoreGrid, GridCoord, EGEE, SEE-GRID. He coordinated EDGeS and currently coordinates FP7 projects EDGI, SHIWA and SCI-BUS. Dr. Robert Lovas is the deputy head of the LPDS at MTA SZTAKI. He received his MSc and PhD degrees at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is currently
Page 47 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action coordinator of the DEGISCO project and is member IDGF, member of the Technical Committee of the Hungarian Grid Competence Centre, expert of the Grid Application Support Center (EGI GASuC), former member of the EU CoreGrid NoE, and programme committee member of several summer schools and workshops/conferences. From 1997 he has been involved in several national (Chemistry Grid, HAGRID, WEB2GRID), intergovernmental bilateral, and European Grid projects (all phases of EGEE, CANCERGRID, ETICS-2, and EDGeS). In HARNESS he worked as an exchange scientist at Emory University, Atlanta, USA. He has experience in ICT collaborations with academic organizations, universities, and enterprises from various application areas. He is a co-author of more than 40 scientific papers and book chapters on parallel software engineering and Grid computing. He was a co-editor of the book 'Distributed and Parallel Systems: Desktop Grid Computing' (Springer).
Stichting AlmereGrid (AlmereGrid) Stichting AlmereGrid - Foundation AlmereGrid - operates the first City Grid in the world. Currently it operates a service that enables citizens, SMEs and other organizations to donate unused computing cycles to scientific programmes. As the world's first, it especially addresses "early majority" people and organizations.
The long-term vision of AlmereGrid is to develop a Community Grid in the city of Almere that will be part of everyday life, both for private persons and companies. Private persons will, for instance, do video editing using part of AlmereGrid for doing the calculations; they will play complex demanding games. They will also explore a whole range of on demand services.
Many companies have signed a partner agreement with AlmereGrid. They contributed resources, such as systems, software or services, and participate in the developments and projects. AlmereGrid partners and previous partners include: SARA, Oracle, Rabobank, IBM, NWO/NCF, LogicaCMG, ALCA, Foundry, ALCA, Engage Technology. AlmereGrid is working together in co-makerschips, with the Institute for Information Engineering, an institute for higher education in ICT in Almere.
AlmereGrid was partner in the FP6 project BEinGRID, a part of Business Experiment 15 that has implemented and tested a Grid based back-up service for SME's. AlmereGrid was partner in the FP7 project EDGeS. Within the EDGI and DEGISCO projects, AlmereGrid is leading the Dissemination work package and contributing to the Grid operations services.
The persons mentioned under key-personnel are committed to work for Stichting AlmereGrid. They will be directly hired in accordance with GA II.15.1 with contracts ('Overeenkomst van opdracht') that fulfil the criteria for in-house consultants as described in the Guide to Financial Issues relating to FP7 Indirect Actions, Version 16/01/2012 page 60. For AlmereGrid the way of working as in-house consultant fits the goal of the organisation and the interest of its partners. The supervising will be carried out according to the bylaws of the foundation; i.e. employees and in-house consultants are directly supervised by the Director, and the Director’s work by the elected Board. Due to the nature of the organization and its international activities, teleworking will also be allowed for employees/in-house consultants. Concerning
Page 48 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action the conditions of teleworking, salaries, eligible travel costs, and other financial issues, the foundation complies with the criteria described in the “Guide to Financial Issues".
During the project negotiations a detailed document "Operational capacity of Stichting AlmereGrid for IDGF-SP (version 7.1. 2013-01-07)" has been provided and discussed with both the project officer and the project coordinator.
The most important parts of the above cited document are summarized below:
Core organization
AlmereGrid is a network organization that tries to keep its own organisation as lean as possible, by leveraging, strengthening and coordinating work of its network of partners, volunteers and users.
For employing personnel AlmereGrid looks for the type of contracts that enabled AlmereGrid to get the following outcome:
the highest qualified persons as possible, with preferably a lot of international expertise preferably recruited from AlmereGrid partners (so they also can benefit from the increased experience of the person) being able to operate inside the AlmereGrid network to maximize the flow of knowledge and experience work should benefit AlmereGrid and should be guided by AlmereGrid
From a personnel point of view the core organisation of AlmereGrid consists of two entities:
The Board of the Foundation The Director of the Foundation
The Director is appointed by the Board. All personnel in AlmereGrid reports to the director.
Currently Ad Emmen is managing director of Stichting AlmereGrid, Wim van der Sanden is Chairman of the Board. (Please note these data are available from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce.)
AlmereGrid IDGF-SP project participation organisation
For the IDGF-SP project, there are three persons listed as key-personnel: Ad Emmen, Leslie Versweyveld, Bernhard Schott.
The following roles and reporting structure will be in place:
1. Ad Emmen (managing director) will act as IDGF-SP project manager for AlmereGrid. He will coordinate the work for AlmereGrid, be the primary contact with the IDGF-SP project coordinator, and supervise the work of Leslie Versweyveld and Bernhard Schott.
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2. The work of Ad Emmen will be supervised by the Board. For instance, there is regular reporting of the progress of the work of AlmereGrid to the Board, there is a procedure (with the Treasurer of the Board) to check time sheets, payments, etc. 3. Leslie Versweyveld will have the role of dissemination officer for AlmereGrid in the IDGF-SP project. She will report to the director/project manager. 4. Bernhard Schott will act as an analyst/researcher but will also participate in dissemination activities. He will report to the director/project manager.
All three key-persons have the intention to participate in the IDGF-SP project for the duration of the project.
These persons will work on the basis of "Overeenkomst van opdracht". They are “directly hired”, according to the Grant Agreement Annex II.15.
Criteria for in-house consultants and how they are met by AlmereGrid for IDGF-SP key-personnel:
Criteria Implementation The beneficiary has a contract to engage a AlmereGrid's contracts bind the persons to physical/natural person to work for it and some of that do the assigned work. work involves tasks to be carried out under the EU/Euratom project. The physical person must work under the instructions of This has been described above. The the beneficiary (i.e. the work is decided, designed and contracts explicitly state this item. supervised by the beneficiary). The physical person must work in the premises of the AlmereGrid allows teleworking by beneficiary (except in specific cases where teleworking standard. AlmereGrid has rules in place to has been agreed between both parties and provided such a assure AlmereGrid can supervise the practice is in full compliance with the provisions persons in an appropriate way. regarding teleworking and instructions given by the beneficiary as described here above). The result of the work belongs to the beneficiary (Article This is part of the “Overeenkomst van II.26 of ECGA). opdracht” contract and guaranteed by Dutch legislation. The costs of employing the consultant are not significantly AlmereGrid benchmarks its costs against different from the personnel costs of employees of the similar jobs also in other organisations same category working under labour law contract for the offering similar jobs. beneficiary. The remuneration is based on working hours rather than Guaranteed by the “Overeenkomst van on the delivering of specific outputs/products and should Opdracht” rules in the Dutch legislation. be recorded in the accounts of the beneficiary. The persons have to fill out timesheets recording their work, signed by the project manager for AlmereGrid in IDGF-SP. Travel and subsistence costs related to such consultants' Train tickets, flight tickets and event fees participation in project meetings or other travel relating are paid as much as possible directly by to the project would have to be paid directly by the AlmereGrid. Other costs will be paid by beneficiary in order to be eligible. AlmereGrid to the employee on the basis of daily allowances.
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Role in the project Within IDGF-SP, AlmereGrid leads WP3 on setting up campaigns to attract more citizens, and contributing to WP5: especially on Green IT contributions and the editing of the Road Map.
Short CV of Key Personnel
Ad Emmen studied physics at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. From 1980 until 1995, he worked at the foundation for Academic Computing Services Amsterdam (SARA) in several positions. He published papers on supercomputing and publishing technology; was co- founder of the journal “Supercomputer”. In 1996, he set up Genias Benelux, of which he is currently managing director. He is editor of Primeur Magazine. He participated in the European Esprit projects HOISe-NM (ES 20.183), EROPPA (ES 22503), and Dynamite (ES 23499) and the IST projects WebSET (IST-1999-10632) and IERAPSI (IST-1999-12175). For HOISe-NM he was project manager. He is managing director of the Foundation AlmereGrid and Member of the board of Gridforum Nederland. He has worked on the BEinGRID project and was the dissemination leader of the EDGeS project. Currently he is dissemination manager of the projects EDGI, DEGISCO, and Contrail (FP7-ICT-257438.) He is also active in developing the Knowledge Base for the FP7 e-Infrastructures project e- IRGSP3.
Leslie Versweyveld studied Roman Languages at the University of Antwerp. She published several scientific articles on medical information dissemination. She worked on the European Esprit projects HOISe-NM (ES 20.183) and Dynamite (ES 23499) and the IST projects WebSET (IST199910632) and IERAPSI (IST199912175), BeinGRID, EDGeS, and e- IRGSP2. Currently she is active in the FP7 projects EDGI and DEGISCO. Bernhard Schott was the CTO and co-founder of VCOdyne SAS, Versailles, France, focusing on Clouds, Grids and Distributed Computing. Bernhard Schott will be acting as inhouse consultant for AlmereGrid Foundation. Over the last 20 years, his focus has been on distributed systems: from nano-second signal distribution over real-time data distribution, to distributed Enterprise Service Architectures. Since 2000 he has been at Platform Computing specializing in HPC data centre and Grid technologies. Bernhard Schott is the Coordinator of DGSI (until April 2012), a D-Grid project, was Exploitation Manager for FP6 project QosCosGrid, led the DEISA co-allocation contract project, headed the partnership between Platform Computing and EGEE, and is member of the OGF-EU-Industry Expert Group. He is co-initiator and active contributor to the OGF-Green IT working group. Bernhard Schott received his degree in physics from University Frankfurt. Currently he is involved in the FP7 project DEGISCO where he is handling the Green IT aspects of the IDGF Roadmap for AlmereGrid.
University of Westminster (UoW) The University of Westminster's Centre for Parallel Computing (CPC) is focused on research and application of distributed and parallel computation technologies. CPC is engaged in research on grid and cloud computing technologies, and has specific expertise in Grid application support and user interfaces. CPC has installed and runs the BOINC-based Westminster Local Desktop Grid since 2008 using over 1600 laboratory computers as workers. CPC joined the UK National Grid Service (NGS) as a partner site in February 2006
Page 51 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action providing a 32 node cluster for NGS users. CPC has also launched the Westminster Grid Application Support Service (W-GRASS) in 2007. CPC has been involved in several national and European projects. Within the framework of the UK e-Science funded OGSI testbed project the research team developed the Grid Execution Management for Legacy Code Applications (GEMLCA) solution. CPC has also been involved in several FP6 and FP7 project such as the FP6 ePerSpace Integrated Project and the CoreGrid Network of Excellence project, and the FP7 EDGeS, EDGI, SHIWA and SCI-BUS Integrated Projects, and DEGISCO Support Action project. Currently, the CPC research team consists of one full-time professor, one reader, two senior lecturers and six full-time and part-time PhD students and two researchers.
Role in the project UoW is leading WP4 in the project and many other tasks. Main role is to address scientific organizations.
Short CV of Key Personnel Dr. Gabor Terstyanszky - is a Reader at CPC, University of Westminster. His research interests include distributed and parallel computing: clouds, desktop and service grids . He had several research grants at various universities of Germany, Spain, and United Kingdom. He published 110 papers at conferences and journals. He was member of programming committees of several conferences and workshops. He coordinated more than 15 research projects, such as: COPERNICUS, COST, FP4, FP6 and FP7. He contributed to the design and development of Grid Execution Management for Legacy Code Architecture (GEMLCA) with the research team of the Centre of Parallel Computing. He established the Westminster Grid Application Support Service (W-GRASS) in 2007. He was key player in designing and implementing the SHIWA Simulation Platform.
Prof. Dr Stephen Winter - is Professor of Distributed Computing Systems, and Head of the Cavendish School of Computer Science at the University of Westminster. He is also the Director of the Centre for Parallel Computing (see above), and has led a number of research projects in parallel and distributed computing technology funded by national Research Councils and the European Union including EDPEPPS, SEPP, and HPCTI. He has also led the development of distributed simulation architectures for urban traffic modelling and microscopic simulation through the EU-funded projects HIPERTRANS, and OSSA. He has published over 100 technical papers in the field of parallel and distributed computing and has supervised around 20 research students. He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer and a member of several professional bodies including IEE, InstMC, IEEE and Euromicro. Until recently he was an editor of the Journal of Systems Architecture, and IEEE Micro. He has been an active organiser of numerous conferences and workshops in the field of parallel and distributed computing.
Tamas Kiss is a Senior Lecturer in Database Systems at the Department of Information Systems and Computing, and a researcher at the CPC, University of Westminster. His research interests include distributed and parallel computing, cluster, grid and computing. He led the design and development activities resulting in the Grid Execution Management for Legacy Code Architecture (GEMLCA) solution within the UK EPSRC founded OGSI Testbed project. He was involved in several FP research projects such as CoreGrid, EDGeS, EDGI SHIWA and SCI-BUS, and FP7 support action projects such as DEGISCO. He led the application support work packages in these projects. He also coordinates the application support activities of W-GRASS. He also has extended experience in delivering Grid courses
Page 52 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action and tutorials. He co-authored one book and more than 60 scientific papers in journals, conference proceedings and as book chapters.
Universiteit Leiden for ABC@Home (LU) The number theory group at the Mathematical Institute, which is led by the internationally famous mathematician Hendrik Lenstra, is well known for two things: the outstanding quality of its research in pure mathematics (Lenstra won the highest Dutch scientific honor, the Spinoza award, and was the Program Chair for the most prestigious international mathematics conference ICM in Hyderabad in 2010), and secondly for its projects aimed at a wide audience of citizens to promote science.
One of the major projects that were initiated by Lenstra and De Smit was launched in 2007 together with Kennislink.nl, a Dutch website devoted to popular science. The goal of this project was to engage citizen and particularly high school students in actual mathematical research, namely a collaborative computational project aimed at gathering number theoretic data related to the famous ABC conjecture. The project, which was built on the BOINC architecture, is currently one of the longest running BOINC projects, with a total number of about 120,000 users. It has been able to harness an formidable amount of computational power from the spare computer cycles of volunteers that has now in 2011 produced the first major milestone of the project: a complete list all so-called ABC-triples up to 10^18. This list is now being used for scientific analysis and it has drawn the interest of the international number theoretic community, including the mathematical founders of the ABC conjecture, Masser and Oesterle, who lectured at an event organized by the project in November 2010.
Role of the project
LU is contributing to several tasks in the project. Main role is to engage citizens and university students in volunteer computing. Short CV of Key Personnel Bart de Smit got his Masters degree in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam in 1989, and his Masters degree in computer science in 1990. He completed a PhD in mathematics at the University of California in Berkeley in the area of algebraic number theory. He has published about 30 scientific papers in pure mathematics, including contributions to the 1997 Springer volume devoted to Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. He moved to Leiden in 1998, and he has tenure as an associate professor since 2004. His experience in running EU funded projects includes being the Network coordinator for a Marie Curie Research Training Network called Galois Theory and Explicit Methods in the years 2006-2010. Since 2011 he is the director of educational affairs for the Bachelor and Masters program in mathematics in Leiden. He frequently lectures on his scientific work, and on several science promotion projects he initiated with Hendrik Lenstra, for instance in the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Mathematical Association of America in Washington DC in April 2011.
Sony Europe Limited (SONY) The Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris was founded in 1996 and is a small group engaged in fundamental research in areas of ICT and basic science that could have a long
Page 53 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action term potential impact on Information Technologies. SONY CSL has done highly regarded research in AI (in the fields of linguistics, robotics, music production and music analysis). SONY CSL has also been in a forerunner the field of Internet technologies, in particular in the field of emergent semantics for content distribution and collaborative technologies for environmental monitoring.
Since 2007, SONY CSL has been working together with the U.K. Meteorological Office and the ClimatePrediction.net volunteer computing project at the University of Oxford. SONY CSL adapted and optimised the British climate models for the PlayStation 3 in the prospect of extending ClimatePrediction.net to owners of the gaming console. Concerns about the energy consumption of volunteer computing have led to new approaches to reduce the impact.
European projects in which SONY CSL was involved recently include Alear, Miror, Tagora, Semantic-Hifi, ECAgents, SensoPack.
Role in the project
SONY is leading WP5 in the project. Main role is to continue working on Green Desktop Grids and analyse financial benefits of Desktop Grids.
Short CV of Key Personnel
Dr. Peter Hanappe studied electronic engineering at the University of Ghent, Belgium. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on real-time music and sound environments at Ircam (Centre George Pompidou, Paris). When a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris he has worked on new modes of content creation and distribution before focusing on projects in the domain of sustainability. He was involved in setting up a collective system for monitoring noise in urban environments (NoiseTube) and in building critical components for large-scale climate simulations in collaboration with the U.K. Met Office. He has also developed technologies for minimizing energy usage in volunteer computation projects such as ClimatePrediction.net.
Worldwide Computer Company Limited (as representative of Charity Engine, CE) Although immensely successful when compared to conventional supercomputing, desktop grids remain a tiny proportion of the Internet (less than 1/10th of a percent).
Charity Engine is designed to persuade the rest of the public - those who are not motivated enough by science - to volunteer their surplus PC resources as well. Instead of supporting particular projects, Charity Engine volunteers participate because their PCs directly benefit ten major charities. Currently Charity Engine has contracts with: Wolfram Research, GridRepublic, BOINC and the nine charities (ActionAid, Amnesty, CARE, Medecins sans Frontieres, Oxfam, Practical Action, Sightsavers, War on Want, Water Aid.
Charity Engine sells the computing resources (to projects which would never find volunteers otherwise), then distributes the profits 50-50 between the charities and the volunteers in the form of periodic prize draws.
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The result is what will become the world's largest project-agnostic volunteer grid. The volunteers don't care what task their PCs are running because it all raises money for the same good causes - and for the prize draws. We can therefore make the grid available to hire like any commercial platform.
Traditionally, volunteer computing has only been available to projects which can capture the public's imagination. Charity Engine makes this vast resource available to anyone for approximately 1c per CPU/hr.
Role of the project CE is contributing to several tasks. Main role is to extend volunteer computing with charity activities.
Short CV of Key Personnel Mark McAndrew is the founder and CEO of the Worldwide Computer Company, the operator of Charity Engine. An ex-programmer and systems analyst, he has successfully raised two rounds of venture funding to create the Charity Engine BOINC grid, gained exclusive partnerships with nine international charities and secured the expert services of GridRepublic and the Director of BOINC, Prof David Anderson. He has also presented Charity Engine at various tech and industry conferences, including ISC09 (Hamburg), TNW 2011 (Amsterdam) and NAFEMS World Congress 2011 (Boston).
Stichting International Desktop Grid Federation (IDGF, The Netherlands) The International DesktopGrid Federation is a member organisation that brings together persons and organisations active in Desktop Grid and related technologies. The federation became operational in mid 2010, with support from the DEGISCO and EDGI projects, but has grown beyond the boundaries of the projects. It has currently about 35 organisations and 175 persons as member.
During its first year and a half of existence, there have been 11 IDGF tutorials and workshops were organised, there is a lively IDGF forum, and a lot of technical documentation available. The IDGF “Desktop Grids for eScience Road Map” is recognised as an important document for those interested in setting up a Desktop Grid, and includes information on all levels, not only technical, but also legal and organisational.
The persons mentioned under key-personnel are committed to work for Stichting IDGF. Arie Vleugel is member of the Board. The others will either be directly hired in accordance with GA II.15.1 with contracts ('Overeenkomst van opdracht') that fulfil the criteria for in-house consultants as described in the Guide to Financial Issues relating to FP7 Indirect Actions, Version 16/01/2012 page 60, or unfunded contributors.. For IDGF the way of working as in- house consultant fits the goal of the organisation and the interest of its members. Currently, the Stichting IDGF has an initial Board and Director mainly consisting of persons that are also active on (but not official representatives of) other partners of the IDGF-SP project. In this way, the Foundation is independent of the other partners in the project, and it is up to the members (participants) in the Stichting IDGF to appoint a Council that is responsible to appoint a Board and Director. The supervising will be carried out according to the bylaws of the foundation; i.e. employees and in-house consultants are directly supervised by the Director, and the Director’s work by the elected Board. Due to the nature of organization and
Page 55 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action its international activities, teleworking will be also allowed for employees and in-house consultants. Concerning the conditions of teleworking, salaries, eligible travel costs, and other financial issues, the foundation strictly follows (among others) the rules described in the latest version of the “Guide to Financial Issues relating to FP7 Indirect Actions”. The Deliverable D1.2 (Quality Management and Progress Monitoring Plan) will describe the related monitoring and management mechanism in details.
Role in the project IDGF will participate in the user, citizens and data oriented work packages. IDGF participation will leverage experiences from members bringing in specific experience on schools, LHC@Home and Cyber Citizen Science, and be involved in transferring IDGF-SP experiences into IDGF.
Short CV of Key Personnel Arie Vleugel, Member of the Board of the Stichting IDGF I.O. And responsible for giving IDGF its legal structure (a Dutch Foundation, formal establishment expected in December 2011) started his career in User support and operations at the Dutch national supercomputer centre SARA. In 1989 He started the company (SME) ALCA with activities in computer based training, systems support and systems assembly. He was involved in several large Dutch projects aimed at implementing programmes to get computers in the class room: CIAO (Computers in Amsterdams onderwijs) project for 82 schools in Amsterdam, and eBoat for 54 schools in Almere.
Francois Grey is currently Coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre in Geneva, Professor of Distributed Scientific Computing at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and Honorary Professor of Nanotechnology at University College London. He was the recipient in 2010 of a Shuttleworth Fellowship for his work in establishing the Citizen Cyberscience Centre. He has recently published an overview of the Centre’s activities: Citizen Cyberscience: the new age of the amateur, F. Grey, CERN Courier, 51, 7 p411-43 (2011). He has six years’ experience in managing the successful launch of citizen-based science projects. These include MalariaControl.org, a project for volunteer-based epidemiological modeling in collaboration with the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, and Computing for Clean Water, a project launched at Tsinghua University for simulating novel types of filter for water purification, in collaboration with IBM. These projects are supported by >100,000 volunteers worldwide. Francois Grey has a background in micro and nanotechnology, having worked for over ten years in that field as a Professor and Deputy Director of a national research centre in Denmark. He was also head of IT Communications at CERN for six years and founded the CERN openlab student programme.
Ben Segal studied physics and mathematics at Imperial College, University of London, then worked for 7 years on fast breeder reactor development, first for the UK Atomic Energy Authority and later in the USA for the Detroit Edison Company. In 1971 he completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering and then joined CERN in Geneva. His most significant work was the coordinated introduction of the Internet Protocols at CERN which helped to pave the way for Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web at CERN. Since retirement, as an honorary CERN staff member in the IT Department, together with Francois Grey, he launched the LHC@home project starting in 2004. This uses the BOINC infrastructure to harness very large amounts of volunteers'
Page 56 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action computing power, initially to help design CERN's new LHC accelerator. With some additional financing from outside CERN, starting in 2005, we also applied BOINC to work on disease control in Africa via the Africa@home and MalariaControl projects. We then went on to found the Citizen Cyberscience Centre (CCC) in 2009 to promote Volunteer Computing and Volunteer Thinking techniques in many areas of science and education.
B 2.3 Consortium as a whole
All partners have expertise relevant to the project. To summarize:
MTA SZTAKI
Experience with Desktop and Service Grids & coordination of European projects. Useful related new projects: SCI-BUS, where 27 Grid user communities to be supported for 3 years.
AlmereGrid
First City desktop grid in the world. Good connection to local media channels. Dissemination expertise in several European projects. Green Desktop Grid expertise
International Desktop Grid Federation
Is the organisation supported by IDGF-SP. Involvement of IDGF in IDGF-SP assures good collaboration and swift take-up of the project results
University of Westminster
Experience with porting and supporting applications for Desktop Grids and integrated systems. Desktop grid operations at campus level.
University of Leiden
• Expertise in operating a large Desktop Grid • Experience with addressing kids with volunteer computing
Charity Engine
Brings aspecial way of involving citizens into the project
Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris
• was involved in green studies on volunteer computing. Expertise in how to address mass markets.
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Some of IDGF-SP partners are from the EDGeS/EDGI/DEGISCO consortia (including MTA SZTAKI, AlmereGrid, and UoW) which have already been involved in the application/infrastructure related activities.
However, the main goal of this project is to broaden the exploitation of the infrastructure in several ways, that is why the partners have been selected having expertise in several important additional areas that are complementary to each other.
In the next table we provide a summary of the main competences needed in the project, and how partners fill those in.
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Table 6: Competences provided as a consortium Competence needed Partners Comments
Operating Desktop Grids MTA SZTAKI has experience in There is extensive experience with operating SZTAKI Desktop Grid, at least four types of Desktop Grid: AlmereGrid runs a city Grid, UoW campus-wide (local), city-wide, has local desktop Grid, LU operates a large-scale volunteer, special large Desktop Grid, Charity Engine business-model oriented. has started its beta production.
Operating connections to MTA SZTAKI operates the main There is extensive experience in other e-Infrastructures DCI Bridge between BOINC and operating connected e- (including services Grids EMI middleware Infrastructures. and Bridge technologies) (gLite/ARC/UNICORE). MTA SZTAKI is a partner of EGI. UoW operates a validated application repository that is used when jobs cross e-Infrastructure boundries
Organising international AlmereGrid, CCC, UoW, MTA International training courses are training courses. SZTAKI have experience in mainly aimed at scientists and organising and contributing to academic organisations. But international training events. extending outreach to industry can also be done.
Technical support on MTA SZTAKI, IDGF experts There is extensive knowledge by Desktop Grid middleware groups, AlmereGrid, UoW, have these partners in technical support and other Grid experience in providing support of Desktop Grid and EDGeS middleware middleware: MTA SZTAKI especially in BOINC and gLite, AlmereGrid in XtremWebHEP..
Setting up awareness Charity Engine, AlmereGrid, CCC, The diverse nature of the past campaigns and LU have organised awareness experiences assures we can choose campaigns aimed at the general a good blend of activities with a public. big chance of success.
Experience in Green Sony Computer Science Research This is especially important to computing Lab and AlmereGrid have involve large numbers of background in this field. volunteers. Both persons and organisations
Application porting and UoW and MTA SZTAKI run W- Application that run correct and support expertise GRASS and GASuC. LU, Charity efficient are key to the success of Engine and AlmereGrid have any infrastructure. In Desktop experience in application porting Grids we have additionally to take care they do not harm a volunteer's computer in any way.
Experience in operating a UoW successfully operates a private This allows us to build on practical private desktop grid desktop grid at Westminster experiences. University.
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Experience in supporting AlmereGrid does the administration It is not only the project partners a community of users and of IDGF since the beginning of the infrastructures and applications we operators organisation. UoW and MTA intend to support, but those of all SZTAKI are involved in supporting IDGF members. IDGF.
B 2.4 Resources to be committed
The financial plan of the project is carefully adjusted to the planned management and support activities. It includes mainly the personnel costs of consortium members (described in The Summary of Staff Effort Tables), and moderate amount of travel costs, consumables, and equipment that are necessary for the successful completion of the project. Concerning self- contributions; a significant amount of resources (a part of the IT infrastructure of connected Desktop Grids) complementing the EC contribution are to be committed by partners above their compulsory self-contributions. Additionally, based on the surveys (see Section on Impact a very large number of volunteer donors (students, citizens, and companies) are also expected who will offer their spare Computing capacities.
The distribution of the budget plan among the cost categories based on the total project cost:
Table 7: Project cost distribution Personnel 75.1%
Travel 7.6% Equipment 0,2% Consumables 0,4% Overhead 16,7%
The total project cost is 974 096 EUR (as it is shown in the following table), which – considering the workload (136 PMs) undertaken, the deliverables provided and added value of the project generated – can be considered a low budget. The consortium requests 0.86 million EUR financial contribution from the European Commission to the project, which is the 88% of the total project costs.
Table 8: Project costs PARTNER PERSONEL OTHER INDIRECT TOTAL REQUESTED
MTA 177,450 21,281 39,746 238,477 212,642 SZTAKI
AlmereGrid 122,450 14,870 27,464 164,784 146,932
UoW 112,500 12,085 24,917 149,502 133,306
LU 72,000 7,200 15,840 95040 76,175
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SONY 80,825 8,164 17,798 106,787 95,218
CE 58,427 5,843 12,854 77,124 68,769
IDGF 108,000 10,652 23,730 142,382 126,958
974 096 860 000
The details of the project budget per participant and per cost category and work package are depicted in the following table.
Table 9: Costs per participant and per category
PERSONNEL DIRECT OTHERS DIRECT INDIRECT
WP1 WP2 WP3 WP4 WP5 WP1 WP2 WP3 WP4 WP5 WP1 WP2 WP3 WP4 WP5 MTA SZTAKI 50,400 50,400 21,000 34,650 21,000 6,044 6,044 2,518 4,155 2,518 11,289 11,289 4,704 7,761 4,704 AlmereGrid 0 6,200 74,400 0 41,850 0 753 9,035 0 5,082 0 1,391 16,687 0 9,386 UoW 0 13,500 13,500 72,000 13,500 0 1,450 1,450 7,734 1,450 0 2,990 2,990 15,947 2,990 LU 0 24,000 36,000 12,000 0 0 2,400 3,600 1,200 0 0 5,280 7,920 2,640 0 SONY 0 0 35,056 0 23,371 0 0 3,506 0 2,337 0 0 7,712 0 5,142 CE 0 6,625 0 10,600 63,600 0 669 0 1,071 6,424 0 1,459 0 2,334 14,005 IDGF 0 21,000 33,000 33,000 21,000 0 2,071 3,255 3,255 2,071 0 4,614 7,251 7,251 4,614 Total 50,400 121,725 212,956 162,250 184,321 6,044 13,388 23,364 17,415 19,883 11,289 27,023 47,264 35,933 40,841
The management cost in WP1 is 6% of the total budget, which arise by the coordinator.
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Personnel costs
The personnel costs (75% of the budget) cover the wage and payroll taxes for advisors, scientists, engineers, software specialist, tutors, and technicians who are full or part time work within the project.
According to 7% limitation EC contribution in case of indirect costs, the partners will cover the unfunded costs from their own resources, which equals to 114 096 EUR.
Other costs The travel costs (7.6% of the budget) cover the cost of participation on internal project meetings and review meetings, on dissemination/training events which is the part of the dissemination plan of WP4. The planned travel budget was kept within a low limit; the consortium will try to organize as much as possible the technical and administrative cooperation using VoIP technologies, videoconferences, and taking the advantages of major events, like Grid conferences, in order to held technical and management meetings as well as dissemination and training events of the project jointly with them.
The equipment costs cover the necessary additional equipment dedicated to our project. The consortium mainly spends for equipment for dissemination and support activities (0,2% of the budget).
The consumable costs (0,4% of the budget) mostly include production of brochures, posters, DVDs, CDs, newsletters, and handout materials for training and dissemination events (mainly by the WP3 and WP4 partners). The partners will optimise their consumable costs using electronic and on-line media instead of traditional brochures and handout materials.
Indirect costs The indirect cost-estimates of consortium partners were calculated according to the 20% model that should be used in support actions to give a good estimate of the own contributions.
Operational Desktop Grids and other e-Infrastructure components The partners already operate a number of Desktop Grids: The BOINC based volunteer (public) and institutional (local) Desktop Grid systems include: 1. SZDG (SZTAKI Desktop Grid) is a volunteer DG system based on BOINC and established in 2005. It currently runs two applications and collected over 90.000 computers worldwide. 2. AlmereGrid is a volunteer city grid collecting desktops from the citizens of Almere (a Dutch newtown) in order to run applications relevant for the citizens of Almere. This has over 7.000 computers and has both a BOINC and an XtremWeb version. 3. UoW (Univ. of Westminster) local DG connects the computer lab machines of 6 campuses of the university into an institutional DG system. About 1700 desktops are connected based on BOINC. The primary goal is to run scientific research applications developed at the university. 4. The EGeS@Home desktop grid (http://edgesathome.org) is directly connected to the EGI gLite infrastructure and used to run appliactions that can run on the complete e- Infrastructure. MTA SZTAKI, AlmereGrid, and UoW, are involved in this 15.000- computer desktop grid.
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5. SZTAKI operates a Bridge between Desktop Grids and gLite, KnowArc, and Unicore based Grids. 6. UoW operates the desktop grid application repository.
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B3. IMPACT
B 3.1 Strategic impact
The project will as its main impact have that a significantly larger number of citizens will donate their unused computing time to science and collaborate as Citizen-Scientists with scientists. Not only citizens at home, but also SME's and other (small) organisations will donate more computing time. The other important impact will be that there will be significantly more research organisations that will install private desktop grids (that could be extended with volunteer grids) for use by their scientists.
Hence, as a result of IDGF-SP: 1. The relation between science and society (citizens) will become closer; 2. There will become more in-expensive and power efficient compute resources available to scientists in Europe and abroad; 3. Europe will maintain its leading role in Desktop Grids for eScience usage 4. The IDGF will be strengthened as a platform for advancing Desktop Grid technology. The number of trained developers as well as ported applications will be increased significantly from what is present today. This will help the migration of new users towards this new distributed infrastructure and increase its innovation potential.
Because more citizens, students, and companies will donate resources to scientific purposes, the results of the project will also lead to more awareness under the general public of computational science and distributed computing co-funded by the European Commission.
Table 10: Expected outcome Expected impacts listed in the work How the project's impact will contribute programme
Support measures are expected to strengthen IDGF-SP strongly collaborates with IDGF the development of a consistent and dynamic to assure take-up of the project results by European policy for research infrastructures the Community. IDGF-SP will continue the including the data produced by this policy started by EDGeS and continued with infrastructure. EDGI and DEGISCO to take care Desktop Grids can be connected on all levels with European e-Infrastructures, from the technological level to organisational level, including EGI connected infrastructures and Virtual Research Communities.
Support measures for strategies and studies are IDGF-SP produces several studies and expected to provide solid ground for future reports as part of its work. Especially the choices and help in decision making and WP5 produced Desktop Grids for eScience deployment concerning e- Infrastructures. Road Map document and the reports of financial aspects and Green IT aspects of Desktop Grids are usable for decision making bodies.
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Dissemination actions should raise the IDGF-SP will contribute to the visibility of visibility of the e-Infrastructures activity e-Infrastructures in two ways. First the towards wider audiences. project, and especially WP3, will get more persons – citizens – actively involved in the Desktop Grid part of e-Infrastructures with applications that sometimes cross several types of e-Infrastructures. Moreover, we can expect that these new volunteers and the “ambassadors” will spread the awareness of e-Infrastructures even wider. Second, IDGF- SP will design several communication activities that will specifically target the general public with success stories of IDGF type e-Infrastructures.
IDGF-SP will have a great impact on the more efficient use of computational infrastructures, in Europe and abroad, and on not only spreading the visibility of e-Infrastructures to a wider audience, but also getting more citizens involved in donating computing time to science, and thus strengthen the bond between science and society.
The creation of many of new private desktop grids, will significantly increase the amount of inexpensive computer power available to scientists in an easy accessible and green way. More importantly, is that the experiences gathered in setting up these private desktop grids will be fed back into the IDGF Road Map and other best practices documents that will enable IDGF to promote the usage even more, not only to technical administrators, but also university administration, funding agencies and other policy makers.
Getting a large number of new volunteers involved in donating computing time to science, not only means there will be a significant increase of – Green – computer capacity available as part of the overall e-Infrastructure, it also means there will be more citizens involved in these collaborations with science. This will improve the relation between science and society.
Because IDGF-SP is aimed at supporting and strengthening the work of IDFG and its members, we can also be sure the impact can be achieved, as we have desktop grid operators, application developers, and support organizations that will use the results of IDGF-SP and thus amplify the project's impact.
B 3.2 Spreading excellence, exploiting results, disseminating knowledge
Spreading knowledge about the use of e-Infrastructures that include volunteer and private (campus or enterprise) DCI and bridge technologies to interconnect e-Infrastructures is an important objective of the project.
The IDGF and its members constitute the main dissemination vehicle for IDGF-SP as the project is designed to support and boost specific IDGF activities.
The IDGF federation brings together developers for Desktop Grids and connected infrastructures and major users of the infrastructure. The Federation is also open for
Page 65 of 70 FP7-312297 IDGF-SP Support Action companies providing DCI technology. By providing tools, such as a common website, creating jointly dissemination material, discussion forum and events, persons involved in these DCIs can collaborate and exchange experiences. The Federation is also open for membership by non-project partners. In fact we will actively promote membership. Hence the International Desktop Grid Federation will ensure the IDGF-SP project has a much broader impact than just for the project partners, and it also is an important part of providing sustainability of the project results after the project has finished.
However, we will also look at other opportunities to disseminate project results and activities. A Dissemination plan will be produced and regularly updated, summarising all activities and producing the operational communication plan for the next period. The plan will also summarize our efforts and plans towards collaboration with other related EC funded projects.
The project will plan activities adequately resourced devoted to dissemination for specialised constituencies and general public, in particular for awareness and educational purposes. The dissemination plan deliverable has to consider adequate messages about the objectives of the project and its societal and economic impact. The tools to be used should include web-based communication, press releases, brochures, booklets, multimedia material, etc. The 'dissemination material' should be regularly updated to provide the latest version of the project status and objectives. Electronic and/or paper versions of this 'dissemination material' will be made available to the Project Officer beforehand for consultation and upon its final release.
The project will have also dissemination activities and materials which will not require Project officer approval before using (e.g. tweeting, presentations).
The dissemination plan, actually a Communication Plan, will follow the usual phases for a Communication plan.
It will start with an analysis phase in which we collect and further specify potential audiences and potential communication tools we can use. It will also contain a Communication SWOT analysis In the next phase we will produce a Strategic Communication Plan. This will list the main target audiences identified, the tools we intend to use and the communication goals we want to achieve for each audience. An Operational Communication plan will be produced for each period following the Dissemination Deliverable date. This will contain specific actions we will plan, such as specific media (press, and which press, television, etc.) specific flyers to produce, specific conferences and events to attend. So, within the project communication plan we will identify the potential target groups for our communication and dissemination activities, identify the communication tools we can use and create a communication matrix that allows us to identify the optimal communication mix, by also identifying the outcomes we expect for each group/tool combination. This matrix will be used to identify and later in the project adapt our dissemination and communication strategy.
As a starting point the following communication matrix will be used:
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Table 11: The project's communication matrix Target Group for Type Expected outcome Comment dissemination and communication
Citizens (and SME's General We aim at a significant This is the main focus other organisations) as increase in the number of of WP3. We will reach potential volunteers citizens that donate them through a variety computing time and in the of tools, including the number of computers that “ambassador” network, participate in volunteer communication about desktop Grids pre-installed clients on SONY computers, etc.
Researchers Scientific We aim at more We can reach these researchers that will make through scientific and use of computational technical conferences infrastructures. and workshops. Preferably in their own country or at regional events.
Universities and Scientific, Help them with setting up We can reach them at research organisations technical private and public desktop infrastructure, Grid and Grids (and connect them supercomputer events to other infrastructures). and through technical Goals are to make them newsletters and aware that they can make magazines. Targeted more resources available material in local to their scientists and they language (including can more easily participate possibly books) will in scientific collaboration also be used. with others. The Road Map is an important tool for this audience.
WP4 will pay special attention to this audience.
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Policy makers Policy Make them aware of the These will be reached collaboration possibilities by general with European bodies, and articles/releases and by that they can help both participation in the their local creation of the road researchers/organisations map. Of course the road with resources and map will also be a connections to Europe. dissemination tool for them.
The Road Map is an important tool for this audience.
General public in (not General Activities are targeted to General media and specifically intended to raise awareness of popular science media recruit them as volunteer desktop grid are the most volunteers, but to computing and the way appropriate tools to create awareness.) citizens can contribute to reach the general science audience. Also our “ambassador” network will play an important role
E-Infrastructure Scientific/tech We want to make them Europe has a wide providers and scientists nical aware of the collaboration variety of conferences (for creating awareness possibilities, and inform and exhibitions in these and collaboration them about citizen- areas that will be used. opportunities) scientists work. Also articles in technical press will be used. The Road Map can play a role here too.
We will use an appropriate communication mix for each audience consisting of several dissemination tools. The most important tools are:
IDGF portal and project website. The portal contains static parts and dynamic parts like discussion platforms for the user communities and DCI operators. It is structured in a way that each audience immediately gets to its own place. The Desktop Grids for eScience Road Map will be used as main background communication document. Press releases. Most of these will be targeted to (readers of) technical oriented media. We will actively follow up the releases to assure maximum coverage. The goal is to create maximum awareness of the connected infrastructures. Targeted news production through a blog (to which people can also subscribe). This will provide a possibility to release news about the connected infrastructures and related topics of interest.
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Participation in conferences, workshops, summer schools and events (with booth or display). This tool will mainly be used to reach potential user communities, peer infrastructures and scientists. New media tools like Vimeo as a video channel and Twitter for communication during events. Producing small explanation videos and putting them on a public video site could be useful for several audiences. Training session both for operators of the infrastructure and for the experiments. These will be targeted events. Participation on concertation meetings, working on concertated reports. Targeted activities for citizens.
All of these activities will be done in either English or a local language (or both), whatever is most appropriate for the activity in a given context.
As said, from the above non-exhaustive list, we will produce a communication plan with a communication matrix that includes the audiences, the tools, the estimated audience size, and the expected outcomes (qualitatively and quantitatively). We then can compare the real outcomes with the projected outcomes and use this to adjust our communication mix in following releases of our dissemination plan.
The scientific and technical conferences we target are leading academic/technical conferences and workshops related to e-Infrastructures, grid, cloud, HPC, virtualisation and infrastructure management. Potential events and publication platforms are the International Conference on Grid Computing (ICAC), the International Symposium on Cluster Computing and Grid (CCGrid), the International Workshop on Grid Computing (GRID), the International Workshop on Grid Computing and its Application to Data Analysis (GADA), the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Network Storage and Analysis (SC), the High Performance Distributed Computing Symposium (HPDC), the International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), the International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments (VEE), The International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), the Cracow Grid Workshop (CGW). In addition we target conference in potential application areas.
Some of the technical press we will target are: HPCwire, EnterTheGrid - Primeur magazine, and iSGTW.
Dissemination will be coordinated with other e-Infrastructures projects and initiatives. Especially with projects that operate e-Infrastructures in Europe (such as the NGIs, EGI), dissemination projects, such as eScienceTalk, projects that have collaborations with e.g. ICPC countries (such as EUChinaGrid, EUIndiaGrid and EELA) and other dissemination/policy kind of projects; such as OGF Europe and EPIKH.
In The Netherlands, the Dutch Gridforum Society will be used by AlmereGrid to disseminate activities towards the Dutch e-Infrastructure operator and user community.
Collaborations with other citizen science projects, such as Citizen Cyberscience Center will, of course, also be set-up and deepened.
Proper acknowledgement of the source funding (the FP7 logo and the European Union flag ) will be done in all dissemination activities.
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B4. ETHICAL ISSUES (IF APPLICABLE)
Although the IDGF-SP project itself does not pose any ethical issues, because it is about disseminating and supporting infrastructures, there could be applications that will run on the supported infrastructures which raise ethical issues. If necessary, IDGF-SP will assist with handling these issues.
Within the IDGF-SP project the Project Management Board will deal with any ethical issues that may arise.
Ethical issues in relation to the IDGF-SP project could also arise concerning the handling of large amount of statistical and personal data collected from individuals and organisations in public Desktop Grid systems. This is the first responsibility of the Desktop Grid operators. However, IDGF-SP can assist and provide recommendations to take care of the security and integrity of the data of the users and the Desktop Grids.
In order to ensure data anonymization data protection best practices and standards will be followed including European Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data.
B5. GENDER ASPECTS (OPTIONAL)
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