Workshop on the Development of a Next-generation, Interoperable, Federated Networking Cyberinfrastructure

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

The national and global research Cyber Infrastructure (CI) of the future is likely to exhibit a dichotomy in the physical distribution of cyber resources. At one extreme are traditional, large-scale data centers, such as the NSF supported supercomputing centers (e.g., NCSA, PSC, SDSC, NICS). The other extreme includes highly distributed federations of collaborating resources represented by tightly and loosely coupled federations for NSF projects including, but not limited to, GENI, XSEDE, FutureGrid and NSFCloud, which include university campus IT and campus research networks. In this second model, small collections of resources are owned and operated by a large number of participating sites. The most important contribution of the CI platform is not the sheer bulk of resources at any one facility, but rather the wide reach of the overall federation. These diffuse federations have a number of desirable characteristics: they benefit from natural geographies of researchers and data, and they require relatively modest resource contributions from each site, thus encouraging broad participation. Building and maintaining highly diffuse federations of cyberinfrastructure involves distinct technical challenges that need to be discussed, analyzed and overcome. This proposal funds a workshop that will bring together participants from the GENI, NSFCloud, FutureGrid and XSEDE communities to discuss, compare/contrast and understand the various communities' needs and approaches to control frameworks for CI. The workshop will be held in the Washington, DC area on October 14th and 15th, 2014. To help identify opportunities for collaboration, participants will be specifically encouraged to make statements of the form "My project needs" or "My project can offer" regarding the following topics: 1. Tools for cyberinfrastructure-supported researchers; 2. Tools for cyberinfrastructure owners / providers; 3. Data structures and protocols for control of resources; and 4. Data structures and protocols for control of federations.