EGI: Shaping the Future European Grid Infrastructure

The European Grid Initiative (EGI) establishes a sustainable, pan-European grid infrastructure to support leading edge collaborative e-Science in Europe. National Grid Initiatives (NGI) are the building blocks of the future European grid, which according to current plans, will begin operations in 2010.
Today’s research has international and interdisciplinary dimensions and does not stop at national borders. Countries are linking their national grid infrastructures in the service of international scientific collaborations. The creation of a distributed, sustainable pan-European grid infrastructure is essential in maintaining Europe as a leader of the international competition. This is done through EGI.

What does EGI bring?

EGI will provide a flexible and reliable computing grid resource with long-term benefits for participating countries. EGI unites European computing and storage resources and creates a resource that pushes scientific progress towards new and innovative solutions. It will improve coordination by establishing a coordinated grid computing and
data storage solution that reduces efforts required in maintaining multiple national solutions. EGI will also offer improved compatible, interoperating technologies much needed in European grid computing. Additionally, EGI improves collaboration not only in computing, but also in human and intellectual resources.
Scalability and interoperability are the biggest future challenges for EGI. The infrastructure must be able to provide an operations model with flexibility, a low cost of entry, and scalability. The interoperability and interactions of NGI grid technologies must be ensured by identifying best practices. Also, after the transition to EGI, all NGIs must be autonomous and fully responsible for sustaining support for their own user communities, technical operations and middleware requirements.

The transition to EGI

Currently, thousands of scientist rely on the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) grid and other similar grid infrastructures. Thus, it is essential that an operating large-scale production grid continues to serve scientific communities throughout the transition to EGI, with at least the same quality and level of satisfaction as today. The transition period from the current European grids to EGI began in May 2008 and will continue through the initial three years of EGI. The number of NGIs contributing to EGI is expected to steadily increase over this time. The main changes experienced by users and administrators of EGI’s new distributed model will be organizational, as the emphasis moves from interested individual institutions to national initiatives, and from central supervision to central coordination

Management and funding of EGI

EGI will be composed of NGIs and an EGI Organization (EGI.org). EGI.org will serve as a “glue”, enabling coherence between NGIs for the benefit of users. It will link existing NGIs and actively support the setup and initiation of new NGIs. EGI.org will provide central functions to address primary coordination of infrastructure operations, user support, application development, middleware interfaces, final certification, and management. The main funding for EGI is expected to come from the European Union and fees collected from the participating NGIs.