On this page you will find PRACE White Papers related to HPC Resource Access and Exchange.
Title: An Administrative Framework for Tier-1 Resource Exchange within Europe
Authors:
George Karagiannopoulos, Greek Research and Technology Network, 56, Mesogion Av. 11527, Athens, Greece
Ioannis Liabotis, Greek Research and Technology Network, 56, Mesogion Av. 11527, Athens, Greece
Wim Rijks, SURFsara, Science Park 140, 1098 XG Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abstract: DECI (Distributed European Computing Initiative) provides a resource exchange programme for Tier-1 resources within Europe. The programme has been running since 2005, initially under the DEISA projects and since September 2011 under the PRACE Implementation Phase projects. In PRACE IP projects, in contrast to DEISA, partners can opt in and out of calls on a call-by-call basis. This raises some issues in order to fulfill the juste retour principle of compute resource exchange between different partners. A stable administrative framework for resource exchange is necessary in order to provide PRACE with a tool to facilitate the management process of Tier-1 resource allocation during the DECI calls and to give a reliable mechanism to all partners on accounting of resource contribution and resource consumption. This White Paper describes the process, identifies the main actors, and presents the appropriate scheduling of the DECI Call preparation and implementation. We found that the main elements of such a framework are to record the resource commitments/availability for each DECI call and make those accessible to the relevant parties, to keep track of the usage of such resources and to provide views of provided vs consumed resources per DECI call, per year or for any arbitrary time period. The proposed framework could be useful for the organization committee in any implementation of a Programme for Tier-1 resources exchange within Europe, for the developers that will implement the proposed tool to support the DECI process and also for policy makers who will be responsible for the acquisition of new Tier-1 systems.
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