EOSC-hub

DIRAC is a complete framework for building distributed computing systems of any level of complexity. Initially developed for the LHCb High Energy Physics experiment at the LHC collider at CERN, the framework was generalized for the use by multiple scientific communities in various domains. Services based on the DIRAC software are offered by several grid infrastructure projects such as France-Grilles or GridPP/UK. Since 2014, the DIRAC services have also been provided for the EGI users. 

Delivering complex software stacks across a worldwide distributed system is a challenge in high-throughput scientific computing. The global-scale virtual file system CernVM-FS distributes more than a billion software binaries to hundreds of thousands of machines around the world.

EOSC-hub brings together advanced computing services into a federated solution that covers the needs of research communities: from powerful and fully-customisable Infrastructure as a Service to high-level and interactive computing platforms. This webinar introduces the main compute services of EOSC-hub with a focus on how they can be used for data and compute driven research and to support the development of advanced services for research and science. The webinar will showcase actual examples of use cases in production that leverage the EOSC-hub services for their daily needs.

The objective of the webinar is to present to service providers how their services can be offered via the EOSC portal. The talk will also highligth the different access options for the user to access services, and how users’ requests are served by the providers. Benefits and the duties an EOSC service provider has after the service is being published in the EOSC portal will be also presented.

This webinar will describe the EOSC-hub proposal for a Technical Architecture for EOSC. The proposed architecture is based on the concepts of service composability and interoperability and aims to facilitate access to services, lower barriers to address complex digital needs, integrate data and services from multiple suppliers, support FAIR data and enable cross-infrastructure interoperability.

The architecture includes functions, interfaces, APIs and standards as technical concepts, with the final aim of fostering interoperability and, ultimately, service composability. It is
based on the concept of individual building blocks usable in fulfilling functions. Each building block is specified with the definition of a technical and interoperability specification that includes an high-level architecture, suggested EOSC standards and APIs and interoperability guidelines. Example of technical and interoperability specifications will be presented during the webinar.

The EOSC-hub project operates many of the core elements of the European Open Science Cloud, and acts as the main facilitator of onboarding new services in EOSC. The main entry point for onboarding is the EOSC Portal. This webinar will provides assistance for service providers who want to share services via EOSC with the EOSC Portal and with the use of extra services offered by EOSC-hub. The presentation will describe the various options for onboarding in the EOSC Portal and for integrating with the Authentication-Authorisation Infrastructure, with the Availability-Reliability monitor, with Usage accounting system, with the Helpdesk, with the Service Management System. The webinar is meant to provide an overview of the ‘big picture’ of EOSC onboarding as enabled by EOSC-hub, so providers can choose the best approach for integration into EOSC. 

This webinar supports the public consultation on the EOSC-hub Briefing Paper “Provision of Cross-Border Services”. The paper describes challenges involved in provision of publicly funded rivalrous services such as storage and compute across borders in Europe, with a focus on demanding use cases involving large amounts of resources. The paper discusses opportunities the EOSC could present for key participants and puts forward recommendations for the EOSC, on which feedback is invited via a public consultation. The webinar will describe the work which was undertaken and explain the insights gained and the recommendations which are proposed, and will provide the opportunity for questions and discussion.

IT Service Management is a discipline that helps provide services with a focus on customer needs and in a professional manner. It is widely used in the commercial and public sectors to manage IT services of all types, but current solutions are very heavyweight with high barriers to entry.

FitSM is an open, lightweight standard for professionally managing services. It brings order and traceability to a complex area and provides simple, practical support in getting started with ITSM. FitSM training and certification provide crucial help in delivering services and improving their management. It provides a common conceptual and process model, sets out straightforward and realistic requirements and links them to supporting materials.

FitSM is the reference framework being used in several EOSC initiatives, among other research infrastructures as well. Through FitSM, the aim is to conduct effective IT service management in the EOSC federated environment and achieving a baseline level of ITSM that can act in support of ‘management interoperability’ in federated environments from EOSC related projects.  

In addition, participants have an opportunity to receive a formal certification backed by certification authority APMG for anyone successfully passing the exam (20 multiple choice questions, 13 required to pass). Both the costs of the training and the exam is covered and offered by the EOSC-hub project for free.

 Offering a reliable services is a good way to promote your services in EOSC. ARGO monitors your services and notifies is case of a problem allowing you to intervene asap. In this training session we are going to show the process we follow to monitor a new service with ARGO. Is that all? No, we are going to present the full stack of the service, the automations we are working on, the real time computations and the results via the alerts, API and UI.

Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) are an important component of Open Science and FAIR data practices. PIDs ensure that entities within the research workflow are discoverable, citable, comprehensible, and connected.