Will EOSC gateway become a new concept for HPC centres?
On the 27th of April Ilja Livenson from the University of Tartu gave a presentation about HPC centres as EOSC providers at the event “EOSC Core and Marketplace Provider Days” hosted by EOSC Future.
EOSC Core and Marketplace Provider Days from the 26th – 28th of April 2022 became an inspiring event for everyone. Especially those who are planning to start providing services and resources through EOSC or is already doing so.
In five sessions, EOSC Future project experts and associated project partners outlined what makes an ‘EOSC provider’, the types of resources they can provide, how to become an EOSC provider as well as upcoming features and opportunities. As an outcome, participants got a better idea of how to get more out of services and research products.
The session “HPC centres as EOSC providers” presented some of the efforts that are underway in building bridges between HPC centres and the EOSC platform. It particularly zoomed in on hot issues like resource allocation and persisting interoperability challenges. Among other speakers, Ilja Livenson from the University of Tartu and leader of EOSC-Nordic work package 3, addressed this topic.
Connecting users to LUMI
In his presentation, Ilja Livenson introduced possibilities for connecting users to the LUMI supercomputer from EuroHPC via EOSC. LUMI research infrastructure provides a high-quality, cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable HPC ecosystem. The supercomputer is hosted by the consortium including ten European countries and represents a good example of cross-border collaboration. LUMI is using the Puhuri service for allocating resources and managing user identities. This solution enables resource allocators to treat LUMI as a local or national service. But what would happen if LUMI was automatically accessible to all users via EOSC marketplace portal?
To get an experience on how EOSC can affect service delivery for an HPC centre, the WP3 team attempted to access LUMI via EOSC in the testing environment. The experiment was successful, but raised some questions that need to be clarified. For instance, it is unclear how the allocation of resources occurs in EOSC. Moreover, the added value of EOSC gateway in comparison with national infrastructures needs justification. Furthermore, AAI and GDPR contracts and agreements may become an issue. Thus, the future will show whether the services provided by EOSC can become an extension of the services provided by the HPC centres.
In addition to Ilja Livenson’s talk, the session “HPC centres as EOSC providers” also included a presentation by Shiting Long (FENIX) on the work that has been undertaken by the FENIX research infrastructure to connect with EOSC. In addition, Debora Testi (PRACE) explained how the PRACE Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe acts as an EOSC provider. The session concluded with a presentation of the C-SCALE HPC federation for Earth Observation in EOSC by Raymond Oonk (SURF). All talks are available on the EOSC Portal’s Youtube channel.