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New document published: Grid Network Services Use Cases from the e-Science Community
by Greg Newby 29 Apr '08

29 Apr '08

New OGF document published in the Information track: GFD-I.122 Title: Grid Network Services Use Cases from the e-Science Community Author/editor: T. Ferrari Abstract: Network services are specialized in the handling of network-related or network- resident resources. A network service is further labeled as a Grid network service whenever it has roles and/or interfaces that are deemed to be specific to a Grid infrastructure. We provide a high-level, structured description of some well-understood Grid network services use cases. The purpose is to facilitate the identification of network services critical to the Grid middleware and user applications in e- science, and to identify relationships. View and download OGF documents here: http://www.ogf.org/gf/docs/?final -- Greg Newby, OGF Editor Dr. Gregory Newby, Chief Scientist of the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center Univ of Alaska Fairbanks-909 Koyukuk Dr-PO Box 756020-Fairbanks-AK 99775-6020 e: newby AT arsc.edu v: 907-450-8663 f: 907-450-8603 w: www.arsc.edu/~newby

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New document published: OGSA(R) Data Architecture
by Greg Newby 29 Apr '08

29 Apr '08

New OGF document published in the Information track: GFD-I.121 Title: OGSA(R) Data Architecture Authors/editors: D. Berry, A. Luniewski, M. Antonioletti Abstract: The Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) presents a vision of a broadly applicable and adopted framework for distributed system integration, virtualization, and management. OGSA provides several capabilities, one of which is data management. This document, produced by the OGSA Data Working Group within the Open Grid Forum (OGF), gives a high-level description of the interfaces, behaviors, and bindings for manipulating data within the broader OGSA architecture. The functionality described covers the storage, movement, access, replication, caching and federation of files and databases. View and download OGF documents here: http://www.ogf.org/gf/docs/?final -- Greg Newby, OGF Editor

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OGF Gridforge downtime 29 April, 16:00-20:00 CDT
by Joel Replogle 28 Apr '08

28 Apr '08

All - There will be down-time for Gridforge (forge.gridforum.org) tomorrow, 29 April, from about 16:00-20:00 CDT. Note that the actual down-time will likely be less, however we are migrating Gridforge to new machine (up-to-date OS, easier to support) and it may take some time for the DNS updates to propagate. Also note that -------------------------------------------------------------------- Joel Replogle - Manager of Standards, Open Grid Forum replogle(a)ogf.org http://www.ogf.org

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Events Update - OGF23 Community Program and StreetGrid 2008
by john.ehrig＠ogf.org 24 Apr '08

24 Apr '08

OGF23 is the largest and most important event taking place this year that will feature an extensive community program for all those interested in learning about Grid and distributed computing technologies. During the week, participants can choose from numerous sessions, workshops, seminars, keynote presentations and tutorials being offered by OGF and our event partners OGF-Europe and BEinGrid. Les Robertson, Project Lead of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Grid Project at CERN and Mario Compolargo, Acting Director in the European Commission, DG INFSO/F "Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures" will keynote the event and others are planned. The program committee has approved a number of community lead sessions on the following topics: - Cloud Computing - Grid Access Paradigms: Exploring Grid Applications - Using Grid Techniques to Optimise Energy Efficiency - Databases in the Grid: tools, middleware and applications - Workflows in Commercial Grid Deployments - Dynamic Service Level Agreements - Ensuring Quality in Open Source Grid Software - Interoperability between Europe, Latin American, and Asian Grids. In addition, OGF-Europe's program includes a Digital Repositories seminar, a session on Grid Economics and Business Models, and several tutorials. BEinGRID Industry Days will offer numerous case studies of grids deployments in over a dozen commercial sectors. These case studies will be supplemented by actual demonstrations of these deployments and the applications which leverage them. A full online program will be posted in the near future. ----------------- STREETGRID OGF is an event partner at this year's StreetGrid conference in New York on April 28. With nearly 200 registered attendees confirmed to attend, this year looks set to supersede last year's record breaking event. First launched by Waters Magazine in April 2007, Street Grid 07 was hugely successful in attracting senior level architects and technologists providing an open forum to debate the hot issues of grid management and development. This year's event will continue to build on this success providing invaluable educational presentations and thought-provoking debates. OGF is pleased to announce that OGF members are eligible for a special $100 discount. To claim your OGF discount, visit www.watersonline.com/streetgrid referencing VIP Code: SG08/OGF/V. For more information, visit the StreetGrid website at www.watersonline.com/streetgrid or contact Jianjia.chan(a)incisivemedia.com. Regards, John Ehrig Global Inventures Senior Program Manager 925 275-6677

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April 08 GridConnections Newsletter
by john.ehrig＠ogf.org 07 Apr '08

07 Apr '08

The April 08 GridConnections newsletter is here. Open the attached document or follow this link http://www.ogf.org/News/newscal_newsletter.php to view the newsletter. In this Issue: * Stakeholder Survey Q&A * OGF22 Reports: Cloud Systems BoF and OGC Workshop * OGF23 Sneak Preview * Important OGF23 Deadlines * OGF at Street Grid 2008 * Documents Update: New Documents in Public Comment * Upcoming Events: OGF23 & 24, INGRID 08, Street Grid 2008, and Open Source Grid and Cluster Conference * Newsletter Contributors Needed Regards, John Ehrig Open Grid Forum Enterprise and Marketing Program Manager 925 275-6677

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OGF23 Deadlines Approaching
by Julie Wulf-Knoerzer 04 Apr '08

04 Apr '08

1. Call For Participation (final week) 2. Registration (final week for early rate) 3. Hotel Reservations 4. Student Scholarships 5. Group Chair Scheduling 6. Sponsorship Opportunities ++++ 1. OGF23 Call For Participation The OGF23 CFP deadline is Friday, April 11. As with previous OGF events, we are soliciting proposals for content that supports our mission of accelerating grid adoption in both research and industry. While all proposed content related to grid technology and usage is welcome, content related to the following topics is being particularly sought: -OGF Specification Adoption -Digital Repositories -Data Management in a Grid Environment The complete CFP can be viewed at http://www.ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php. 2. OGF23 Registration Register today to take advantage of OGF23's Early Registration rate which expires on Friday, April11! Registration is available by fax, phone or online. For complete details and to register, please visit http://ogf.org/OGF23/registration.php. 3. OGF23 Hotel Reservations OGF has secured a block of sleeping rooms at the Barcelo Sans Hotel (meeting location). Reservations must be made on or before May 15, to receive the discounted rate. Due to the busy travel season in June, attendees are encouraged to book as early as possible. Reservations can be made via fax, by calling the hotel directly (be sure to reference 'OGF23'), or online via http://www.ogf.org/OGF23/lodging.php. 4. OGF23 Student Scholarships A limited number of student scholarships are available for qualifying students. Hosted by OGF, OGF-Europe and CoreGRID, the OGF23 student scholarship program provides a unique opportunity for students to participate in OGF program sessions and group sessions as well as network with distinguished community participants and leaders. Application details and eligibility requirements can be found at http://ogf.org/OGF23/students.php. 5. Group Chair Scheduling OGF Group Chair session scheduling will remain open until April 21. Session scheduling and document details along with a link to the online session request site can be accessed via http://ogf.org/OGF23/chairinfo.php. 6. Sponsorship Opportunities Sponsoring OGF events provides numerous opportunities for your organization to gain greater visibility and recognition as a Grid leader in our global community. Please review the sponsor prospectus at http://ogf.org/OGF23/sponsor.php and consider sponsoring OGF23. +++++++++++++ About OGF23 The global grid community will gather for Open Grid Forum's twenty-third event in Barcelona, Spain on 2-6 June, 2008, strategically placed in easy reach of many European & global experts. Hosted by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, OGF23 is also the first international event where the recently EU-funded OGF-EUROPE project, will play a primary organizing role in the overall event and the program. This project focuses on mobilizing and integrating communities on grid standards & best practices. During a portion of the week (3-5 June), the EU-funded BEinGRID project will be co-locating its "Industry Days" event which includes results of their business experiments using grid technologies. BEinGRID will also show numerous demonstrations of grid deployments in various commercial environments. A small commercial exhibition will also be an important part of this multi-faceted event.

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New document in public comment
by Greg Newby 25 Mar '08

25 Mar '08

This document has newly entered public comment. Please consider reading it and providing your comments to the document authors. Brief comments are welcome, not only detailed analysis. Public comments are an excellent indication of community interest and support for a document. * Information & Data Modeling in OGSA[TM] Grids Architecture Paper Author/editors: E. Stokes et al. Via OGSA-WG. These documents are also in public comment: * Secure Addressing Profile 1.0 Author/editors: D. Merrill. Via OGSA-WG. * Secure Communication Profile 1.0 Author/editors: D. Merrill. Via OGSA-WG. * HPC File Staging Profile, Version 1.0 Author/editors: G. Wasson, M. Humphrey. Via HPCP-WG. * OGSA[TM]® Basic Security Profile 2.0 Author/editors: D. Snelling, D. Merrill, A. Savva. Via OGSA-WG. * OGSA-DMI Functional Specification 1.0 Author/editors: M. Antonioletti et al. Via OGSA-DMI-WG. All documents in public comment may be reached at this Web address: http://www.ogf.org/gf/docs/?public_comment -- Greg Newby, OGF Editor

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March 08 GridConnections Newsletter
by john.ehrig＠ogf.org 12 Mar '08

12 Mar '08

The March 08 GridConnections newsletter is here. Open the attached document or follow this link http://www.ogf.org/News/newscal_enews.php?mar08 to view the newsletter. In this Issue: *OGF22 Report --Tiger Team Stakeholder Analysis and Results --Keynotes --Pharma/Life Sciences Workshop --Financial Services Workshop --Additional Reports *OGF-Europe Q&A with Silvana Muscella and Steve Crumb *Documents Update - Newly Published Documents and Documents in Public Comment *Call For Submissions for OGF Special Journal Issue *OGF In The News *Upcoming Events - OGF23 & 24, INGRID 08 and More *Newsletter Contributors Needed *Please Renew your OGF Membership for 2008 Regards, John Ehrig Open Grid Forum Enterprise and Marketing Program Manager 925 275-6677

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An Open Letter to the OGF Community
by Steve Crumb 11 Mar '08

11 Mar '08

March 10, 2008 To The OGF Community. >From time to time, all organizations need to take stock of their current situation and reevaluate their priorities. As many of you have no doubt noticed, while the OGF community has been relatively stable, and one could argue more productive than ever, some of the primary sponsor organizations have been shifting priorities. This helped motivate your board of directors to task a "tiger team" with answering the following questions: . Who are the stakeholders in the OGF, i.e. what is the community? . Why do they build/support/supply Grids? . What are their greatest pain points? . Who do they go to overcome these pain points? . How do our existing efforts map onto the community's priorities? We felt that answering questions such as these would help us understand where we are as an organization and where we should be going. The net result of this effort was shared with the community at the second Town Hall meeting at OGF22, but we also wish to inform the entire community through this letter. The good news is that it is clear that our core community, rooted in eScience and technical computing, is vibrant and healthy. Core attendance and participation in the OGF events and in most chartered groups is stable and has been for some time. A GFSG decision a few years ago to nurture standards that were felt to be high priorities of the community is bearing fruit, as evidenced by HPC Basic Profile et al. However, we are finding it difficult to continue to attract and retain organizational members and the associated decrease in funding is having a negative impact on our overall financial well being and our ability to continue to support our community activities. Seeing this trend, a stakeholder survey was commissioned and the results showed that there is a gap in interests between the core working base of our community and our traditional hardware and software platform sponsors. Generally, our core workers look to their own organizations or communities of interest for solutions to their grid challenges. This makes them a less attractive target for vendors wishing to sell their products and services. The survey also indicated that end users do tend to look to vendors for solutions, but that they rarely view OGF as a place to work on their problems. It is this last point that is the most telling, forcing us to develop our priorities based on the real value being produced within the working core of our community. Specifically, that we are a community that comes together because we share some set of common problems or experiences with respect to grid technologies. We share our experiences to help each other solve our problems. The community is what we are and we welcome all who want to participate, whether they are academics, high performance computing specialists, enterprise end users, platform hardware and software vendors, funding agencies, partner standards organizations and so forth. But the output of the community must be driven by the needs of the community, with prioritization determined by the community. The survey has also helped us understand many of the existing community's requirements more clearly. As a result, the GFSG has highlighted the standards efforts that are of most important to our community. We intend to help shepherd and nurture the development of those standards and to evangelize the value of the standards we have already created to the broader community, many of whom may be outside of the OGF today but who should find value in our work and who we can encourage to join us and participate. We also need a clear path forward for our non-standards based community activities. As a next step, we expect a group of senior OGF volunteers to add more detail to this in the weeks ahead. With clear community driven goals we then have the opportunity to restructure to enable maximum success. As a volunteer organization it is imperative that our structure is light-weight, minimizing the effort required to co-ordinate activities, efficient and representative of our community. Returning to the work and priorities of the community is urgent, as is determining a sustainable financial model as sponsor members reduce funding. This means that the community must take more responsibility for its own sustenance. We have three levers that are under our direct control: membership fees, event fees/costs and staffing/organizational costs. We will be examining all of these in the coming weeks and months to arrive at organizational and financial structures that are sustainable. As a first step we have already reduced our staffing by 20%. Additionally, we are increasing the full-week event fees by $140 per person, starting with OGF23 in Barcelona. We have not taken this step lightly, however we have not increased fees in the last 3 years, even though costs have risen. These two steps will help with our financial well being, without the need to further reduce our staffing and place more of a logistics and administrative burden on our community. So that is the state of the OGF, your community, your organization. After a period of introspection, we think we have a clearer idea of who we are as a community and our purpose in meeting and working together. As we move forward we need to refine our structure to support our purpose and we need to modify our financial structure to make us more self sustaining and independent. We hope you feel as positive and committed to this organization as we do. Our core community has been stable and productive for a long period of time and these efforts are designed to ensure that this state of affairs continues for the foreseeable future. Best Regards, Paul Strong, Acting Chairman of the Board, OGF Craig Lee, President, OGF

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OGF23 Call for Participation
by Steve Crumb 10 Mar '08

10 Mar '08

Apologies to any who receive multiple copies of this call. OGF23/OGF-Europe Call for Participation Session proposals are being accepted through 11 April, 2008 for OGF23, OGF-Europe's first international event, co-hosted by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (http://www.bsc.es/) in Barcelona, Spain, June 2-6, 2008. OGF Event Programs seek to strengthen existing industrial and eScience communities within OGF, provide a forum to foster new relationships and collaborations based on common interests, and develop best practices and technical specifications related to distributed systems and grids. With the launch of the EU-funded, OGF-Europe project (http://www.ogfeurope.eu) topic-specific community outreach seminars emphasizing best practices, workshops analyzing grid user requirements, and tutorials transferring practical skills will take place as part of this event. Additionally, the BEinGRID project ( <http://www.beingrid.com/> http://www.beingrid.com) will co-locate its Industry Days event where updates and demonstrations of eighteen business experiments with grids will be presented. More details on the call for participation and an online submission form may be found at: <http://ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php> http://ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php. In addition to OGF's chartered groups and Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, the Program Committee is soliciting proposals for content that support its mission of accelerating grid adoption in both research and industry. While the Program Committee will consider all proposed content related to grid technology and usage, they are particularly seeking content related to the following topics: OGF Specification Adoption OGF23 will continue OGF's emphasis on grid specification adoption with a multi-session track showcasing implementations of OGF specifications. Demonstrations and implementation experiences are encouraged as part of these sessions. Digital Repositories Under the remit of the OGF-Europe project, funded by the European Commission, OGF-Europe will hold a Community Outreach Seminar that explores how digital repositories in research, government, and commercial settings are successful leveraging grid technologies and infrastructures. Data Management in a Grid Environment As a follow-up to the full-day workshop held at OGF22 on data movement and management, OGF is soliciting further proposals for sessions that discuss practical approaches and best practices around managing data in either an eScience or a commercial setting. Best Practices In addition to developing grid specifications that lead to interoperable grid software, OGF also produces Best Practice documents that define a particular challenge found in deploying or managing grids and grid applications and then suggest a functional solution (e.g., practice) that solves the identified challenge. Related Community Content As with traditional OGF event programs, the OGF23 Program Committee welcomes submissions of all types (case studies, technology updates, panels, tutorials, etc.). Individuals or organizations proposing workshops will contribute to a publishable "Post-Event report" compiled by OGF-Europe and distributed to major stakeholders giving an overview summary report of the outcomes and findings of the workshop. In addition to the explicit solicitations above, additional topics of interest include but are not limited to: * Achieving scalability and availability in a grid environment * Application development/deployment in a grid environment * Earth modeling and geospatial applications using grids * High Performance Technical Computing and grids * Virtualization, cloud computing, and grids * Exploiting grid technologies for inter-organizational collaborations * Simplifying management complexity of grids * Small-medium enterprise (SME) adoption of grids * Technology Enhanced Learning & Virtual Learning Tools * Digital Content & Digital Rights Management - Applications & Technologies * Medical applications using grids * Telecommunications & Optical Networks * Networked and Virtual Organizations * Collaborative Working Environments * Transportation & grids * Energy & grids Tutorials OGF and OGF-Europe is soliciting proposals for multiple half-day or full-day tutorials, which differ from workshops and other community content in that they are extremely hands-on activities with a clear expectation of knowledge and skill transfer. Tutorial topics may include: developing grid services; deploying grid tools; building grid applications; managing grid infrastructures; and other topics where skills can be taught and transferred to tutorial participants. Tutorials may also be targeted to decision makers such as managers or architects exploring grid technologies for the first time. In this case, a tutorial may include overviews of benefits, costs of deployment, timeframes and manpower requirements, and other useful information for organizations wishing to leverage grids. Online Submission Site ( <http://ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php> http://ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php) is available from 10 March through 11 April, 2008. The Call for Participation submission deadline is 11 April, 2008. Notifications will be sent by 21 April, 2008. Program Committee Wolfgang Gentzsch (Chair), D-Grid, DE Kento Aida, National Institute of Informatics JP Robert Fogel, Intel, US Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, US Fabrizio Gagliardi, Microsoft, US Matti Heikkurinen, Emergence Tech, The e-Infrastructures Reflection Group Support Programme 2 , FI Rajkumar Buyya, U of Melbourne, AU Domenico Laforenza, Italian National Research Council, Institute of Information Science and Technology, IT Erwin Laure, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE), CH Sarah Pearce, Queen Mary University London, GridTalk, UK Morris Riedel, Forschungszentrum-Juelich, DE Bruno Schulze, National Laboratory for Scientific Computing - LNCC, BR Yoshio Tanaka, National Institute for Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), JP Lee Hing Yan, NGO (National Grid Office) Singapore For OGF23 Registration and Lodging information please visit: http://www.ogf.org/OGF23. Steve Crumb Executive Director, Open Grid Forum scrumb(a)ogf.org +1 312-895-5931 (office) +1 630-915-3324 (cell)

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