inspired - egi...federation of institutional private clouds, offering cloud services to scientists...

news from the EGI communityISSUE 16JULY 2014

TOP STORIES

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European GridInfrastructure

www.egi.eu

What can the FedCloud do for you?page 3

Four years of EGI-InSPIREpage 5

Inspired

How do I see the future of EGI?

09 Wrap-up of the Community Forum in Helsinki

Perun: id and access managementpage 7

08 E-infrastructures for agriculture: time to grow!

01 Call for Participation: EGI Pay-for-use

Transnational access across EGI

In this issue...> Yannick Legré writes about where he sees the future of EGI> Salvatore Pinto describes what can the EGI Federated Cloud

do for scientists> Malgorzata Krakowian presents the latest figures of

transnational access across EGI> Tiziana Ferrari looks back at four years of accomplishments

through the EGI-InSPIRE project> Michal Prochazka introduces Perun – an identity and access

management system> Andreas Drakos & Robert Lovas say that it’s time to grow an

e-Infrastructure for Agriculture> Sy Holsinger opens the Call for Participation in the EGI Pay-

per-use scheme> ... and a wrap up of the user-oriented sessions at the

Helsinki Community Forum

Please send your comments, feedback and suggestions to:[email protected] Thanks!

This Issue

Cloud Towers, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela(1865–1931)

(source: wikicommons)

1Inspired // Issue #16 July 2014

Call for Participation EGI Pay-for-UseSy Holsinger invites resource providers and user communities to get involved inrefining the recently developed pay-for-use model

Following on from a policyapproved by the EGI Councilto explore alternativebusiness models, EGI hasbeen investigating theimplementation of pay-for-use mechanisms tocomplement free-at-point-of-use models. This has led tothe development of a proof ofconcept that brings togethertechnical and non-technicalsolutions to provide serviceson-demand and allow theusers to pay for the deliveredservice according to theirusage. This new model will beuseful for researchers whohave dedicated budgets toprocure their ICT capabilities"as a service".

During the initial phase ofimplementation, 21 resourceproviders across 12 countriesdefined prices and advertisedthem in the EGI serviceregistry (19 for grid-relatedservices and 7 for cloud-related services). Now, EGI isinviting both resourceproviders and usercommunities to help test,refine and advance theprocesses and functionality.The team will provideResource Providers with anopportunity to improve themodel's pricing information,help to expand the pool ofproviders and contributefeedback to the currentframework.

Participating user commu-nities will be given the abilityto consume an amount ofservices related to a definedmonetary value and be askedto provide feedback on theconsumer side of the process.

More information

If you are interested injoining or would like moreinformation, please [email protected] 5 September 2014.

More information can befound at:https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/EGI_Pay-for-Use_PoC

2

How do I see the future of EGI?

After starting in February as EGI.eu’s Managing Director, Yannick Legré talks aboutthe future of EGI

The least I can say about the lastfew months is that they havebeen interesting. Stepping in at avery delicate time for EGI whilethe community prepares for theHorizon 2020 programme hasbeen a real personal challenge.But also very rewarding!After eleven years of develop-ment and production activity, EGIis now a mature e-Infrastructurefor science in Europe. EGI’s firstduty is to serve and supportresearch communities andinfrastructures, especially thoseusing big data and facing bigscience challenges. EGI will be akey provider of IT-services for theEuropean Research Area, basedon an open federation of reliableservices, which provide uniformaccess to computing and datastorage resources.I will lead EGI.eu with this missioninforming all my decisions. I amconfident that, as a community,EGI will be able to connectresearchers with the reliable andinnovative ICT services they needfor their work.Building an e-infrastructure ofthis quality has cost money andwill continue to cost money. Thisis not just about buying compu-ting resources but also operatingand maintaining the system. Thehuman element especially cannotbe downplayed here, much ofthe money will go on employingand training up people with ITexpertise, supporting the know-ledge economy and facilitatingexcellent science.This investment represents realvalue for money and the lastdecade has taught us manylessons about how to manage

research infrastructures and howto support big science. This bodyof knowledge cannot be acquiredovernight and is one of EGI’sbiggest assets.Any country or ESFRI looking atbuilding a computing solution fortheir researchers with EGI isbeing offered not only computingresources but also our expertiseand knowledge.We already know how to operate,manage and maintain ‘must have’services such as accounting,monitoring, authorisation &authentication. Any researchinfrastructure with this type ofrequirement doesn’t need toreinvent the IT wheel.We also need to raise our voiceas a community and be moreinclusive when looking at thefuture of e-Infrastructures ingeneral. That is why along withEUDAT, GEANT and PRACE weare working to build an e-Infrastructure commons so thatwe are open and accessible, andable to adapt to the changingrequirements of researchers andseizing any new technologicalopportunities.The European Grid Infrastructure

Inspired // Issue #16 July 2014

is not merely a set of tools,technologies and applications.EGI is the people, people fromacross Europe coming togetherwith a common goal, to supportresearch. EGI is also not amonolith - it is built on theindividual NGIs. They are EGI andEGI is the NGIs, the successes ofthe infrastructure are thesuccesses of the NGIs and viceversa.The EGI community’s strength isits diversity and so far I haveconcentrated on working withthe council on a new governancestructure. EGI, in its entirety, fromthe small NGI to the largest of theEIROs, has a great potential todeliver value. I believe the bestway to make the most of thisasset is to create a new paradigmfor collaboration –transparent,inclusive and based on mutualtrust, open discussions andcollaboration. This will be one ofmy personal objectives at thehead of EGI.eu: to lead EGI to aposition where we can acceleratescience in Europe, where we canwork better together and whereall stakeholders can be heardand represented.

3

What can the EGI Federated Cloud do for you?

Salvatore Pinto explains how researchers can benefit from the EGI Federated Cloud

The EGI Federated Cloud is afederation of institutionalprivate clouds, offering cloudservices to scientists in Europeand worldwide. If you are aresearcher, you can access theFederated Cloud via a uniqueinterface, with single credentialsand with the possibility todistribute the load acrossmultiple providers.

What is the Cloud and whatthe cloud can do for you?The cloud is an IT provisioningconcept that allows users toaccess remote virtual serviceswhich can be rapidly provisionedand released on-demand withminimal management effort.In other words, the cloud provi-des resources that can be usedfrom anywhere via the Internet.These services are based onflexible virtualisation technolo-gies and can be obtained on-demand upon request. Someexamples:> If you want to store file X,simply put it in the cloud andyou can then download it fromanywhere. This is called Storage-as-a-Service (StaaS).> If you want to use anapplication, you just need topress a button and you will havean instance of the applicationrunning for you to use. This isSoftware-as-a-Service (SaaS).> If you want to run an algorithmover a big amount of data,upload it to the cloud and run it(Platform-as-a-Service, PaaS).> If you want access to a webserver, tell the cloud how muchmemory, CPU and disk you need

and we will provide it as part ofthe Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS) role.

The EGI FedCloud as a IaaSAs of May 2014, the EGI Federa-ted Cloud offers operationallyInfrastructure-as-a-Service whichcan be used by scientists every-where, while the other servicesare available mainly for testingand piloting.The FedCloud IaaS provides avirtual web server on demand.These machines are very similarto a normal PC with an internetconnection. You can start andstop them using a client or anAPI. When you start a server, youcan specify the amount of me-mory, CPU and disk you want,picking up one between theflavours available.You can specify the OperatingSystem (OS), selecting one of theBasic OS registered (eg. CentOS,ScientificLinux, Ubuntu) oruploading your own VM (e.g.Microsoft Windows-based). Youcan install any software ordependencies you need orcustomise the OS as you desire.You can assign to the server apublic internet IP (e.g. to host aweb portal) or a private one

(only for internal access). Youcan connect to the server fromanywhere, using protocols suchas Secure SHell (SSH).With the Federated Cloud IaaS,you can exploit additionalcapabilities derived from theflexible and on-demand natureof the cloud concept. You havethe possibility to dynamicallystart new machines, wheneverthe previous ones are notenough for your needs. You candynamically add additionalstorage disk, if and when youfeel there is not enough diskspace into your virtual server.You can use scripts to set yourcredentials to access the serveror automatically install orconfigure your application onstart-up.

How to get started?

If you are interested in the EGI Federated Cloud services, visit theEGI Federated Cloud Wiki (https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/Fedcloud-tf:Users#Getting_access).

For more technical in-deep information, take the “Portingapplications to the EGI Federated Cloud” webinar(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlJjLkS2Xj8).R


© Morriander / wikicommons /CC-BY-SA 3.0

4

Transnational access across EGI

Małgorzata Krakowian presents the landscape

One of EGI’s greatest assets isthe contribution it makes toEurope- and world-wide colla-borations. This is well alignedwith the European Commission’spriorities for the EuropeanResearch Area (ERA), as outlinedin a document called A ReinforcedEuropean Research Area Partner-ship for Excellence and Growth,published on 17 July 2012:“Optimal transnational co-operation and competition -defining and implementingcommon research agendas ongrand-challenges, raising qua-lity through Europe-wide opencompetition, and constructingand running effectively keyresearch infrastructures on apan-European basis”.

In the same year, EGI setup adedicated virtual team to gatherrequirements for accounting

reporting that would demonstratethe transnational usage of re-sources across the infrastructure.Thanks to development efforts,EGI is now able to show howresearchers within each nationalinfrastructure are using theresources of other nationalinfrastructures. This accountingcapability highlights how impor-tant it is to support collaborationbetween researchers worldwideand in Europe.Based on Certification Authorities(CA) that provide the user DNs(Distinguished Name) of certifi-cates published in the accountingdata, EGI has calculated for theperiod between May 2013 andApril 2014 that, excluding CERNconsumption, 32% of CPU usageis provided by resource centresin other EGI countries. With

CERN, the transnational usage ofthe infrastructure raises to 64%.This means that at least onethird of the work done byscientists on EGI is supported byresource providers located inother countries.These values, reported in theAccounting Portal, should beinterpreted considering thefollowing factors:> A small fraction of resourcecentres are not willing to publishDNs of their users outside oftheir country for policy reasons.> Users are mapped to a countryof his/her certificate CA, which isnot necessarily the country ofthe user.The map below shows the dis-tribution of NGIs with differentlevels of users who benefit fromthe international nature of EGI.


Transnational access across EGI: percentage of external consumption of resources, per country(May 2013-April 2014). Grey: no data. Source data: EGI Accounting Portal (http://accounting.egi.eu)

5

Four years of accomplishments through the EGI-InSPIRE project

At the beginning of the fifth year of EGI-InSPIRE, Tiziana Ferrari looks back at pastachievements and future challenges

EGI-InSPIRE is the EC projectcreated to support the setupand evolution of EGI. Four yearsafter its inception in 2010, it istime to look back at the resultswe achieved and to assess howwell the project’s objectives havebeen met.The first major change was thedefinition of a new governancefor distributed High ThroughputComputing (HTC) in Europe. Theprovisioning and operations ofHTC services evolved from a setof activities delivered throughprojects entirely supported bythe European Commission, to anew self-sustainable landscapeof National Grid Initiatives (NGIs)responsible for national HTCservices, under the coordinationby EGI.eu. Since then, EGIevolved into a stable federationspanning 57 countries relying on37 Operations Centres, withincreasingly strong partnershipsin Europe and worldwide withother e-Infrastructures, usercommunities and technologyproviders.The governance of EGI, groundedon the principles of opennessand cooperation, is today stablybased on the EGI.eu ExecutiveBoard and the EGI Council at apolicy and strategic level, andtechnically on several managerialand advisory boards includingthe Technology CoordinationBoard and the UMD ReleaseTeam, the OperationsManagement Board, the User

Community Board, and the NGIInternational Liaisons.During the four years of InSPIRE,EGI has progressively developedand established a vision, missionand core values that go beyondthe original objectives byexpanding them into a long-term strategy to support theEuropean Research Area.From an infrastructure driven bythe needs of few well-establisheduser communities, EGI is nowevolving towards the OpenScience Commons, to letresearchers from all disciplineshave easy and open access tothe digital services, data,knowledge and expertise theyneed to collaborate and performexcellent research.EGI will follow this vision toensure that researchers will beable to:> Access a single point of contactfor obtaining the necessary ICTservices (integrated and inter-operable) the related capacityand support from the various e-Infrastructures (includingcommercial providers),> Connect to the best expertconsultancy to understand theservices they need or to supportdeveloping new solutions toperform their digital research,> Freely discover, share, use, re-use research outputs (publica-tions, data, software, workflows).Project Objective 1 required EGIto operate the largest distributed

European infrastructure whileevolving towards an increasingself-sustainable model. This isbeing accomplished by develo-ping a portfolio of services andsolutions, the engagement withEuropean Research Infrastru-ctures, the establishment of pay-per-use services. We are alsoaddressing new customersegments with the new EGICloud Platform, which isattracting the interest of SMEsand industries thanks to its openstandards and the level of trustthat can be ensured by publiclyfunded cloud operators.In the last four years the

EGI in numbers at the endof EGI-InSPIRE year 4

> Resource providers(including integratedinfrastructures): 355

> CPU Cores (includingintegrated and peerproviders): 593,424

> Installed capacity includingintegrated providers(HEPSPEC million): 4.054

> Installed storage capacity:- 286.0 PB (Disk)- 117.6 PB (Tape)

> Usage- jobs/day (million): 1.54- CPU Wall clock hours

(million hours/day): 4.64


6

The six objectives of EGI-InSPIRE

> PO1: Ensure the continued operation and expansion of today’sproduction infrastructure and transition to a governance modeland operational infrastructure that can be increasingly sustainedoutside of specific project funding

> PO2: Provide continued support of researchers within Europe

> PO3: Help supporting the current heavy users

> PO4: Engage with new user communities including newpotential heavy users of the infrastructure from the ESFRIprojects through new Interfaces that expand access to new usercommunities

> PO5: Provide mechanisms to integrate existing infrastructureproviders in Europe and around the world

> PO6: Extend the infrastructure to integrate new DistributedComputing Infrastructure technologies (e.g. cloud, desktop, HPC)


infrastructure has increased itstechnical stability, and this hasensured continued andimproved support to usercommunities in all sectors fromthe long-tail of science (ProjectObjective 2) to the heavy usercommunities (Project Objective3). To expand on this work, EGIdeveloped an EngagementStrategy to help EGI.eu, the NGIsand EIROs and the user commu-nities in targeting technicalsupport activities towards newlarge research infrastructures.And these research infrastru-ctures demonstrate how existingsolutions can be successfullyadopted as a foundation layerand used to extended support tomany pan-European researchinfrastructures (Project Objective4). As a reflection of this, in fouryears 41 multinational and 26national Virtual Organisationswere created, five of which tosupport testing activities byESFRI projects.EGI policies, procedures andoperational tools are nowtechnology agnostic and theoperations architecture is easilyextendible to any type of plat-form, including cloud, HPC anddesktop grids, as demons-tratedin May 2014 with the launch ofthe Federated Cloud solution(Project Objectives 5 and 6).From a monolithic infrastructurebased on a single internally-

sourced grid technology, EGIchanged into a landscape ofintegrated platforms deliveringdifferent and complementaryservices to the end-user. Thecurrent platform architecture –comprising a core infrastructure,the cloud, high-throughput dataanalysis and the collaborationand community Platforms – isnow easily extensible.With this architecture in place,we can now assert that EGI is aninfrastructure capable of fede-rating any type of ICT service at apan-European level to enabletransnational access.

We are very proud of the Euro-pean added value demonstratedby EGI, thanks to the support ofthe European Commission: inthe last 12 months on average28% of the resources in EGI areprovided to support usage byscientists from other countriesin Europe and world-wide. This,together with over 2,000scientific publications madepossible by EGI, truly demons-trates the international cross-border nature of research andthe primary leading role of theEuropean Commission asenabler of this potential.

The EGI Platform Architecture (MS518)

7

Perun – an identity and access management system

Michal Prochazka writes about an application already making a difference at theCzech NGI

Perun is an applicationdeveloped to manage users,groups and access to theservices in highly distributedenvironments. It gives virtualorganisations (VOs) thatconsume grid- and web-basedservices the ability to manageaccess to such services.Web-based services usuallydeploy federated login solutionsthat cannot be easily combinedwith the digital certificates usedin EGI. A central system tomanage users and their differentdigital identities like Perun cansolve such a challenge.We used two proven concepts todeliver a reliable and robustsolution. First concept is VOs - awell-established organisationalunit in grid environments. Thesecond concept implemented inPerun is a push mechanismused to deliver access controllists to the end services.Perun covers the whole user life-cycle, including user enrolment,VO and groupings organisation,assigning groups to the servicesand membership expirations.Because users may have existingdigital identities, we tried toconsolidate them instead ofcreating new ones. This allowsPerun to put users from differentorganisations into one place,regardless of the type of authen-tication mechanism they areusing (federated identity, digitalcertificate or just simple login).

We have designed Perun to bedeployed into existing infrastru-ctures in order to consolidatedata about the users andresources spread across varioussystems. Data consolidation isdone by integrated import pluginsthat are able to get informationfrom various sources. Perun canalso export stored informationusing different export plugins, sothe integration can be done stepby step. A key feature is delega-tion of rights - this allows entitiesto be managed by the users whoare formally responsible forthem.While Perun can consolidatevarious users’ identities andstore other user related infor-mation, it can also be used as anattribute authority (AA) withinidentity federations. AA gives notonly basic information about theusers, but also theirs group andVO membership information.We have made a successful pilotinstallation for DocuWiki, whichuses federated authenticationand authorisation based ongroups derived from the AAmanaged by Perun.The Czech National Grid Infra-structure is entirely managed byPerun. Some challenges remainwhile managing EGI VOs - forexample, how to create useraccounts on all the machinesand services; something thatcannot be done manually. Users’account expiration and suspension

must be done automatically insuch environment. For this,Perun prepares user accountson the UI machines, feeds VOMSservers with required data andmanages mailing lists for VOusers. For FedCloud VOs, Perunenhances VOMS with additionalfunctionalities such as notificationof which users are banned orexpired, which allows managersto stop or remove their virtualmachines.

Perun in numbers

> 1.5 years in production> Currently managing >3000users> Configures access to 1800services> Manages 135 national andinternational VOs (includingEGI, FedCloud and the SouthAfrican Grid Infrastructure)

More information

Michal Prochazka is aresearcher at CESNET

Perun is open source projectsupported by CESNET(www.cesnet.cz) and CERIT-SC (www.cerit-sc.cz).

Perun web pages:http://perun.cesnet.cz

Perun on GitHub:https://github.com/CESNET/perun


8

E-Infrastructure for Agriculture: it’s time to grow!

Andreas Drakos and Robert Lovas invite you to join the planned AgriculturalSciences Virtual TeamAgriculture-related sciencedomains are gaining more andmore attention. Chris Rawlingsfrom Rothamsted Research gavea great, comprehensive overviewof the topic at the EGI CommunityForum, on the same day that weorganized a networking sessionaround the same theme.What have we learned duringthe agricultural sciencesnetworking session?At international level we gave aspecial focus to the solid resultsobtained by the FP7 agINFRAproject. This project deals withopen linked data and high-levelintegrated services for datamanagement, processing andvisualisation of agriculture datawith the participation of theUnited Nations’ Food andAgriculture Organisation.The new grid and cloud compu-ting based components inagINFRA provide added valueservices to the existing reposito-ries and directories, such asCIARD RING that registers 1000+datasets and information servi-ces in agriculture from institutesworldwide. The agINFRA solutionprovides easy-to-use APIs, high-level user interfaces, sciencegateways with workflow support,and uses EGI resources and EGIsuppor-ted technologies as wellin an agINFRA VO managed byIPB (NGI_AEGIS).At the national level, Agrodat.huwas presented as a project thataims to establish an agriculturalknowledge centre and decision-support system based on datagathered by an innovative, com-plex sensor system in Hungaryand also from international openrepositories using agINFRA-em-powered services.

Is agricultural science readyfor Big Data?The Big Data challenge hasreached agricultural sciencesand new actions are under pre-paration. The agINFRA services,already available through theEGI Application Database, arejust a first step to cover thegrowing needs of this community.This is why we are proposing anew Virtual Team to bring toge-ther the agriculture researchcommunity and EGI resourceand technology providers. TheVT’s main goals are:> Promote sharing of data andservices:Very often the difficulties expe-rienced by this community aredue to the lack of informationabout best practices. The VT willjoin forces with well-establishednetworks and initiatives as theagINFRA and Agrodat.hu, tosupport the ‘Open AGRI-Gate’campaign, an open agriculturaldata campaign designed topromote open data, registeragriculture-related datasets anddata services in one place andmake them accessible and re-usable by everyone.


> Gather special requirements:The VT will bring togetherstakeholders on the agriculturalfield and gather specialisedrequirements that will serve asbase for further collaboratione.g. in H2020.> Sustaining existing solutions:Sustainability of Europeanprojects’ results usually dependson users, funding agencies, basetechnology and solution providers.Since EGI-related activities andsustainability plans might beimportant for this community aswell, the mutual harmonisation,sharing best practices andexperiences would be of highvalue to both EGI and initiatives.

More information

Andreas Drakos, [email protected]

Robert Lovas, MTA SZTAKI(Hungarian NGI)[email protected]

agINFRA : http://aginfra.euAgrodat.hu : http://agrodat.hu

© Myrabella / wikicommons / CC-BY-SA 3.0

9

Wrap up of the Community Forum in Helsinki

Eleni Katragkou gives an overview of the environmental and climate sciencesessions

On Tuesday 20 May 2014, theEnvironmental science on gridsand clouds session broughttogether members of theenvironmental science community,who presented their experienceson existing services, requirementsand trends around the use ofEGI grid and cloud solutionswithin this domain. The sessionshowcased successful applica-tions in the fields of atmosphericmodelling and biodiversitystudies as well as discussed thetechnical challenges and ideasfor exploitation with participants.The session closed with theannouncement of the‘Atmospheric Modeling andServices’ Virtual Team and anopen invitation to participate.

On Wednesday 21 May, anetworking session onProceeding European JointEfforts on Climate ServiceProducts was organised by theClimate Service Center todiscuss the development andimpact of upcoming climateservice products and initiate anetwork for a potential Horizon2020 proposal. During thesession, plans for joint activitiesto develop climate serviceprototypes were presentedbased on the followingquestions: How to effectivelycollect prototype ideas from thecommunity without duplicationof efforts? How to organise thetransition from prototype toproduct operationalisation?

On Thursday 22 May, a trainingsession on Web-processingservices for climate data wasalso organised by the ClimateService Center. During thetraining, both technicalproviders and user communitiesinterested in climatic datafollowed a seminar through auser-friendly, web-basedinterface to assess, visualize andcombine climate data processes.The interface provided access tothe Earth System GridFederation climate data archiveallowing for tailored, end userdata processes and webprocessing services.

Eleni Katragkou is an EGIChampion


Fotis Psomopoulos and Afonso Duarte summarise the Life Sciences session

Grid and cloud computing arenow a fundamental element inall analysis and experiments inLife Sciences. The importance isevident: from the impact of BigData as viewed in most currentresearch approaches, to thehighly complex applications andprotocols required to computenew ideas.During the conference, aworkshop was held to furtherunderstand the state-of-the-artof grid and cloud computing inEU Life Science research.The workshop brought togetherresearchers active in LifeSciences from around Europeand facilitated networkingbetween them under theauspices of EGI.

The main body included talksfrom key Life Science infrastru-ctures and projects such asWeNMR, LifeWatch, BioMedBridges, ELIXIR and LSGC amongothers. Presentations werecomplemented by technical talkson the advances in ELIXIR, theuse of the Galaxy interface, andHPC and biodiversity to name afew. The workshop concludedwith a roundtable discussioncovering several key topics:> Training and education on newcomputational tools in LifeSciences as part of establishedcurricula, such as pre-set VMsfor training purposes aiming at awider audience> Better define userrequirements and data analysis

pipelines for providingstandards and best practiceapproaches> Develop a high-level platform,for easy use of existing andfurther implementation of newLife Science tools> Address the shortage ofexperience on dealing with LifeScience Big Data

Fotis Psomopoulos and AfonsoDuarte are EGI Champions

10

Claudio Prandoni rounds up the e-Infrastructures and services for datapreservation and curation workshop

The workshop, organised by theDCH-RP project, contributed toreinforce the fruitful cooperationstarted among projects andinitiatives working in the domainof DCH, e-infrastructures anddigital preservation (such asAPARSEN and Open PlanetsFoundation) towards the establi-shment of a common registry ofservices and tools to facilitatethe storage, access and preser-vation of digital data.The main outcomes of theworkshop can be summarised asfollows:> Discussed about possibleoptions to ensure the - of theregistry of services and tools

developed in DCH-RP. The aim ofthe registry is to help a broadrange of DCH communities,institutions and projects to planthe implementation of theirdigital preservation processesand to understand the commonlyavailable options. The registrycontains descriptions ofcommon user scenarios as wellas information about the toolsthat may be used to implementthem. In addition it supportssearching the tools databaseusing several criteria and it willalso provide assessments andreviews of most relevant tools.> Collected feedback on theinterim version of the roadmap

for the long-term preservation ofdigital cultural content, whichaims to help policy makers andprogramme owners to planahead and assist managerialteams of cultural institutions intaking decisions related to digitalpreservation and to supportcultural heritage institutions indefining practical action planwith a realistic time frame for itsimplementation.This feedback is now beinganalysed and will be taken intoaccount in the final version ofthe roadmap, which is due bythe end of September.Claudio Prandoni works forPromoteur s.r.l.


Diego Scardaci tells us what happened during the FedCloud demo session

During the networking session,EGI.eu organised a demonstrationto show the most interesting EGIFederated Cloud use cases. Toincrease the interest of thevisitors we decided to adopt anew format for this demo session,without formal presentations.Instead, the presenters weredistributed in a unique roomand showed their demo at thesame time.After a short introduction of thedemos, the participants werefree to go around the room,choose what was most interestingfor them, ask questions anddiscuss with the demo teams.The format allowed theparticipants to have more timefor questions and moreinteraction with the demoteams.The demonstrations presentedwere:

> Biovel - OpenModeller/COMPS,BioSTIF and Openrefine on topof Biovel portal. Presenters:Daniele Lezzi, Giacinto Donvito,Yuliya Fetyukova, Karl-HeinzSylla and Matthias Obst> Catania Science GatewayFramework as cloud applicationbroker and infrastructurebroker. Presenter: Giuseppe LaRocca> ENVRI/EISCAT_3D. Presenter:Salvatore Pinto and IngemarHaggstrom

> Peachnote - OCR analysis inmusic scores. Presenter:Salvatore Pinto> SCI-BUS/WS-PGRADE.Presenters: Zoltan Farkas andPeter Kacsuk

The demos are available athttp://go.egi.eu/fcdemos.

Diego Scardaci is a TechnicalOutreach Expert at EGI.eu

inspired - egi...federation of institutional private clouds, offering cloud services to scientists...

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