Greece
From EGI Knowledge Base
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| NGI Full Name: | HellasGrid |
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| Acronym: | HG |
| URL: | http://www.hellasgrid.gr |
HellasGrid was established in January 2003 by the Managing Authority of the Operational Programme of the Information Society, Secretariat for the Information Society, Ministry of Economy & Finance. It started in the form of two-level Task Force: a policy body supported by a scientific committee. The Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET S.A.) chaired the Task Force and coordinated its activities.
The HellasGrid Task Force developed a national strategy producing a related strategy document which was presented to the research and academic community for consulation at the end of 2003. In 2004 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between GRNET and 19 academic and research institutes. In parallel an application to the Information Society programme (funding authority) was prepared, which resulted in the HellasGrid project with a budget of 2M Euros. The project started in November 2004 with a duration of 3 years. The project procured and installed the HellasGrid infrastructure (6 sites with around 800 cores & 100 TB of storage in disks & tapes and 4 Access Grid nodes) along with its basic services (administration and maintenance). A series of studies on storage integration, middleware repositories, operations integration, the certification authority and expansion towards e-business and e-government have been conducted. At the end of 2007 the project has been extended for another year and another 1M Euros of funding to upgrade its infrastructure and services. Currently the tender for the infrastructure and services upgrade is on-going. GRNET is the coordinator of the project.
In order to promote the usage of the HellasGrid infrastructure a 0,5M Euros programme supported the development or adaptation of applications on the grid. The programme, which was named Grid-App, was run by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology and funded 10 application with around 50K each. In the beginning of 2007 HellasGrid organised the first HellasGrid User Forum, a two day event, where more than 30 Grid applications were presented. The Forum gathered around 100 users in its two days. The book of abstracts is also available on-line. Gradually the HellasGrid infrastructure became saturated, the reason why it is currently being upgraded.
On the 1st of January 2008, the extended HellasGrid infrastructure has been signed among 26 leading academic and research institutes, forming the basis of the National Grid Initiative. The MoU foresees two main bodies, a policy and a scientific one, similar with the HellasGrid structure. The HellasGrid NGI was endorsed by the General Secretary of Research and Technology, Ministry of Development and forms also the basis for the participation of some of the institutes in the EC-cofunded projects EGEE and SEE-GRID (both currently in their 3rd phase). GRNET/HellasGrid is a major partner of the EGEE project (participating in all EGEE activities besides JRA1) and the coordinator of the SEE-GRID-SCI I3 project. GRNET is also a partner of the EGI_DS project preparing for the next EGEE phase.
Hellasgrid's main objective is the supervision of the HellasGrid activities and the coordination of the related communities' activities & actions, so as to provide a seamless electronic infrastructure environment throughout Greece and facilitate the communities' participation in pan-European and international efforts.
| Number of users with valid Grid Certificate: | 170 |
| Number of sites (Resource Centres): | 14 |
| Number of CPUs: | 850 |
| Total storage (in TB): | 90 |
[edit] EGI Functions: Current Rating
[edit] Functions proposed in survey of late 2006
| Coordination of infrastructure operations | Very Important |
| Testing, certification and validation service including middleware | Quite Important |
| Managed resource centers to provide initial resources for new user communities | No Opinion |
| Coordination of user and application support | Not Important |
| Coordination of dissemination and training efforts | Quite Important |
| Representation of European Grid efforts on standards bodies | Quite Important |
| Representation of European Grid efforts with similar bodies from other continents | Quite Important |
Comments...
[edit] Other EGI Functions
Provision of guidelines for policy issues. Comments...
