[Wrong address on first sending - Von] Hello, this is to announce a workshop GGF15 on leveraging site infrastructure for multi-site grids. This results from a number of us wanted to follow up on previous workshops and discussions and an I2 workshop on how Grids could be taking better advantage of existing site infrastructure with a workshop to discussion issues more. Note that we currently have time on the agenda for more speakers if anyone has something to present (see end of announcement for details). Please forward to others who would be interested. Thanks - Von Announcement and Call for Participation GGF15 Workshop: Leveraging Site Infrastructure for Multi-Site Grids Tuesday, October 3rd @ GGF 15 in Boston (11am - 7:30pm) Virtual organizations (VOs) need a variety of information services to provide their structure. For example, it is typical for a Grid to have a certificate authority to provide identity information, an attribute authority to provide information regarding the roles of their users and a resource directory that provides an enumeration of the resources available to the VO. When a VO spans a number of underlying organizations (as opposed to a Grid deployed at a single campus), the best practice today is for the VO to establish their own services to enable its day-to-day functioning. Deploying and operating these services in a security, reliable manner is non- trivial, especially for small to medium virtual organizations, particularly when one considers that these services have a number of security implications in terms of being consulted as part of authorization decisions by end resources. However, there have been some steps in the Grid community to allow for these services to be provided by leveraging and federation the services already provided by the sites on which the VO is based. For example, Fermilab provides a Kerberos CA allowing other sites in a VO to base their Grid authentication on the Kerberos authentication infrastructure already deployed at Fermilab. And campus infrastructures are increasingly deploying outward-facing infrastructure such as Shibboleth, which has several initial efforts focusing on interoperability with existing Grid technologies (Condor and the Globus Toolkit). In this workshop we will explore the how VOs spanning multiple sites can benefit from increased leveraging of the infrastructure of those sites. We will consider both traditional high-performance computing sites as well as other types of institutions such as academic campuses. We will also explore some of the challenges involved in this model, for example: There are no ubiquitous standards for site authentication, attribute, directory, etc. infrastructure. This implies that we need translation mechanisms to achieve interoperability. What translation mechanisms exist today and how well to they work? While some information that sites can provide, such as identifiers for authentication, is generic and can be easily consumed by a VO, the VO may need to define other structure, such as roles for its users, which is not something sites possess today. How can a VO define this information, while still using the site infrastructures to propagate it? Many sites have privacy concerns regarding information about their users. How can sites share information with VOs while addressing these concerns? The workshop plans to produce an informational document capturing the following: List of current success stories for leveraging site infrastructure to form multi-site VOs; Enumeration of existing tools, APIs, standards and technologies for leveraging site infrastructure; Current barriers to leveraging of multiple site infrastructures by VOs. Call for Participation: There is still time on the agenda for several speakers. If you would like to make a presentation related to the above, please send a brief (1-2 paragraph) abstract to Von Welch vwelch@ncsa.uiuc.edu by September 9th. If accepted, full slides would be due by September 23rd. Confirmed Speakers: Ken Klingensten (Internet2) – Campus IT Von Welch (NCSA) – Shibboleth and Globus Jim Basney (NCSA) – MyProxy Integration with local Authentication Tom Barton (U. Chicago)– Signet and Grouper for Distributed Attribute Management Arnie Miles (Georgetown U.) – Shibboleth and Condor Workshop organizers: Tom Barton, Jim Basney, Steven Carmody, Ken Klingensten, Arnie Miles, Frank Siebenlist, Von Welch. For the latest agenda, please see: http://www.ggf.org/GGF15/ggf_events_schedule_MultiSite.htm