1. From Training to Technology Transfer:
experiences from an EU perspective
in the Asia and Pacific region
and opportunities/challenges
presented by Cloud Computing
David Fergusson

2. The problem
We can build technologies and infrastructures.
However without USERS this means nothing.
Only when these tools are used (in this case to
create new science) do they have any meaning.
To do this we have to go out to the communities,
they will not come to us.

3. NeSC Training, Outreach and
Education
Founded in 2004 based on national and EU grants
(EGEE).
Grown from 2 staff to 13 in 3 years.
Courses in UK, in Europe, elsewhere
China, Korea, Japan, Australia, Africa, South America

4. TOE projects
EGEE, EGEE II EGEE III
European Grid Institute Design Study
EGI-Inspire
UK National Grid Service
OMII-Europe
NextGrid
ICEAGE
University of Edinburgh, eLearning & MSc
JISC eLearning
JISC eUptake

5. TOE services
Based around digital library to curate material
Different project views: EGEE, ICEAGE, OMII-EU, NGS
RSS feeds
Multimedia (video/audio/presentations)
Community editable metadata
eLearning services
Online assessment
ePortfolios
T-Infrastructure integration
http://egee.lib.ed.ac.uk/ http://baillie.lib.ed.ac.uk:8080/

6. Training & Education Spectrum
Training
Targeted
Immediate goals
Specific skills
Building a workforce
Education
Pervasive
Long term and sustained
Generic conceptual models
Developing a culture
Both are needed
Society
Graduates
EducationInnovation
Invests
PreparesCreate
Enriches
Organisation
Skilled Workers
TrainingServices & Applications
Invests
PreparesDevelop
Strengthens
Changing Culture

7. EGEE to EGI
Building a sustainable international distributed
infrastructure

8. 8
Activity overview
8
NA1
2%
NA2
4%
NA3
8%
NA4
19%
NA5
1%
SA1
49%
SA2
2%
SA3
9%
JRA1
6%

9. 9
Geographical spread of events
http://bit.ly/EGEEtrainingmap
185 events
in EGEE-III
80 separate
locations
worldwide
2312
participants
Training designated as a NGI task

10. 10
UPDATE Training event locations
2008 - 2010

11. 11
UPDATE Training event data in EGEE-III
<- Event duration
Average course
length 2.5 days
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
EvaluationScore(outof6.0)
Date of Event
EGEE-III Year 1 - average evaluation score 5.1 (out of
6, n=65)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1 2 3 4 5 6 or more
No.ofEvents
Event Duration (Days)
Duration of training events (n=101)

12. 12
Breakdown by event type
Advanced
3%
Application
developer
14%
Applications
6%
Induction
64%
System
Administrator
8%
Train the Trainer
3%
Workshop (retreat)
2%

13. 13
EGEE collaboration events

14. Services for sustainable training
GILDA VO became part of the production
infrastructure
No difference in infrastructure monitoring &
maintenance between production and t-
infrastructure
NGIs can contribute to training with production
resources
Accreditation of trainers
Training support services in EGI
Digital library
Training event database
Trainer registry
GILDA VO
14

15. Digital Library

16. Audio and video in Library

17. 17
Digital library - updates
Improved Search &
Filter
New eLearning
modules
Rebran
ding

18. Digital Library
• Open to everyone for search, retrieval, linking
http://egee.lib.ed.ac.uk
• Also accessible via web services - by negotiation
• Based on Fedora open source repository and international
standards
• Contains now over 6900 learning resources! (>100 videos)
18

19. 19
GILDA t-Infrastructure
Training Infrastructure for EGEE and other European projects,
providing resources for training events
GILDA is now one VO of the production infrastructure
13 site
~1100
cpu

20. 20
Development of EGEE trainers
• Training the trainers
– Provide partner autonomy
– Experts ensure quality of message
• Trainer Accreditation
– Accreditation process:
 Peer approval
 Details of training experience
– Currently 104 trainers

21. Location of accredited trainers (Current; increase in Y2)
22
6
2
717
1
3
8
7
16
5
3
1
2
15
2
5
2
1
4
7
1
Taiwan – 8
Australia – 1
Japan - 1
5
3
+2
+3 +2
+5
+16

22. ICEAGE
Stimulating academic take up of grid subjects in
education
Supporting summer schools - educational cutting
edge
International Summer School for Grid Computing
Biomed SS, GridKa, CERN summer school & others
International shared t-Infrastructure
Working with OMII-Europe & EGEE to extend
Stimulating policy and standards to enable sharing of
educational resources and materials

23. ICEAGE Web site
(www.iceage-eu.org)

24. Collection of Masters courses

25. Collection of Summer
Schools

26. Policy activity - OGF

27. OGF E&T Workgroup
Wiki

28. International Summer School for Grid
Computing

29. Biomed Grid Summer School

30. ICEAGE FORUM

31. E-Infrastructures Reflection Group

32. e-uptake Project
Rob Procter, David Fergusson Lorna
Hughes, Alex Voss

33. Overview
WP1
WP2
Sustainability and integration with
other projects
Dissemination
Resourcing status
Extension request

34. WP1: Fieldwork Phase
I
Aim to develop understanding of academic use
of
e-Infrastructure.
Methodology: desk-based research;
questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews:
50 interviews: 8 respondents per RC (AHRC,
BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC) plus STFC.
Respondents academic users of e-Infrastructure
services selected on basis of desk research and
questionnaire.
Conducted within Community Engagement
Framework of Understanding.

35. WP1: Fieldwork Phase
I
Respondents asked about their use of e-Infrastructure
services:
Services used and role in research lifecycle
How services facilitated research
How respondents found out about them
Whether training and other kinds of support were available and
made use of
Barriers encountered, if and how they were overcome
Enablers that would improve use of services
Transcripts systematically coded up using scheme
developed from typology.

36. WP1: Top Level
Typology

37. WP1: Data Analysis
Identify barriers, understand their causes and
implications.
Identify enablers, what they achieve and scope.
Evolve the typology.
Identify issues to feed into phase II fieldwork.
Identify candidate interventions for:
WP2
Service ‘intermediaries’, service providers, JISC programme
managers
Feeds into other deliverables:
Current state of adoption
Training recommendations
Other recommendations

38. Barrier: Lack of
Awareness
Description: There seems to be a lack of systematic introduction to the services
and the training available, which results in a lack of awareness as well as a a
lack of understanding of how services and methods can facilitate research
and what different options exist.
Examples:
[MR02], [EP02], [AH04]
“one barrier is not having heard of these things” [AH03]
Candidate responses:
Boundary spanning
Opportunities for learning about e-Research / e-Infrastructure
Systematic training of young researchers
Typology:
Social Issues / Training, Education and Outreach / Early Engagement & Outreach

39. Enabler: Boundary
Spanning
Description: Boundary spanning refers to the moving of people
from one discipline to another. It can help transfer ideas,
knowledge and skills across disciplinary boundaries.
Example: As one Arts and Humanities researcher put it: “before
I was at [my current institution], I was at an engineering
department at [other institution] and so I was kind of aware of
a lot of these things that we are talking about – Access Grid,
e-Science.” [AH01]
Barriers addressed:
Lack of awareness of services
Typology
Social Issues / Individual / Career Choices
Training, Education and Outreach

40. User Requirements
On-going collection of
information
Maintaining form of data set to
allow aggregations

41. Results
110 attendees completed surveys at the All
Hands Meeting, Oxford e-Research
Conference and EGEE 2008 in
September.
The top five training requirements from
existing categories are:
1. Introduction to e-Science (25)
2. Application development (15)
3. Monitoring (11)
4. Security (9)
5. Semantic grid (7)

42. UK vs International
Focus
Remain generally very similar.
Differences:
International - Application porting, Monitoring*,
Deployment*, Job Submission
UK - OGSA-DAI, UNICORE, Campus Grid, IPR,
Management issues, Cloud

43. 2008 Training Survey Results:
New Categories
Seven new categories for training have been identified from 2008
Results:
1. Data management (10)
2. Access Grid (6)
3. Interoperation (3)
4. Project management in a distributed environment (3)
5. Campus grid (1)
6. IPR and grid/e-Science (1)
7. Cloud computing (1)
Of these new categories, DATA MANAGEMENT ranks in the top
five across old and new categories (4).

44. One Stop Shop
Atom/RSS/web services/podcast feeds available
Improving filtering based on:
Community projects’ requirements meeting (filtering
requirements)
Practical experiences with ENGAGE (eg. chunking)
Improved merging of materials and events data
Moving to Digital Library@NeSC as single data source
Improving support for the creation for community specific
clients
NGS will implement new versions of clients
Discussions agreed for OMII - data & presentation

45. Interventions I
Earlier Social Science/Arts & Humanities event
allowed investigation of new modes of delivery
but poor community engagement at that point
Lead to adjustment of plans using outputs of UK &
International workshops (eUptake and ICEAGE)

46. Interventions II
More focussed events
joint event with NGS for specific communities
Policy and stakeholder level events (outreach)-
eRoadshows
Greater profile/impact - NGS sponsored UK summer
school
ADSSS
Introductory “text book”
Research in a connected world pamphlet

47. eRoadshows
Introductory events
Delivered to communities in their
own locations

50. 54
Model for learning - IWSGC eLearning
school
Resources
eLearning event with collaboration between gLite,
Globus, UNICORE, Condor
• 4 technology weeks
• ~17 hours per week
(student average)
• 35 Participants

51. technology week
Training
Infrastructure
Digital
Library
Content
COURSE
Winter School IWSGC
site
Virtual Learning
Environment
Live Talks
Keynotes
Tutor chat
Exercises
Tuto
r 55
Recorded presentations
Training documents
Research papers
Student
mailing List
Discussion
Forum

52. Objective
To set up an e-Learning version of the
International Summer School in Grid
Computing

53. Repository Registry t-Infrastructure
Digital
Library
Content
People
Student
Tutor
Assessment
Owner
Marker
Student
COURSE
VLE
NA3 support services were necessary
to complete the winter school

54. Application
Application form
Admission process
Acceptance
Presentations
Registration
Assessment
Pre-requisite
exercises
Winter
School
IWSGC
site
People
registry
Create
new user
Update
Tutorials
Digital
Library
ISSGC
Student process for
Winter school
UNIX
Java
XML
Certificate

55. Application
Application form
Admission process
Acceptance
Registration
Assessment
Pre-requisite
exercises
Winter
School
IWSGC
site
People
registry
Create
new user
Update
Digital
Library
ISSGC
t-Infrastructure
(GILDA)
Presentations
exercises

56. Application
Application form
Admission process
Acceptance
Registration
Assessment
Pre-requisite
exercises
Winter
School
IWSGC
site
Create
new user
Update
Digital
Library
ISSGC
Tutors
Presentations
exercises
Coordinator
People
registry

57. Course Structure 1
Course had 4 “technology weeks”
gLite
Globus
Condor
OGSA-DAI
Each week:
Reading material/online presentations
Tutorials to be completed
Mon-Thu – Tutor available (email/ forum)
Fri – Chat session with Tutor

58. Course Structure 1
Course had 4 “technology weeks”
gLite
Globus
Condor
OGSA-DAI
Each week:
Reading material/online presentations
Tutorials to be completed
Mon-Thu – Tutor available (email/
forum)
Fri – Chat session with Tutor VLE
GILDA

59. Keynotes
To provide high points for the school (idea taken
from ISSGC)
3 Keynote talks
Ian Foster
Miron Livny
Malcolm Atkinson
Live broadcasts
Provided opportunity for students to chat with some
of the prominent grid experts
Adobe Connect

62. Applicants
The IWSGC’08 Admissions Committee received:
55 complete applications
38 prospective participants started working on
Preparatory Exercises
29 from 16 countries participants successfully
completed all exercises and were invited to
register
28 participants successfully completed the
School
1 dropout participant had to give up because of
unexpected commitments.

63. demographics
•38 applicants from
16 countries
Users
76%
App Developers
24%

64. Sustained
engagement in
IWSGC’08
Wednesday, 6th
February 15:00
GM
Iain Foster Invited 39
Peak Users
34
Tuesday, 26th
February 15:00
GMT
Miron Livny Invited 40
Peak Users
34
Wednesday, 12th
March 15:00
GMT
Malcolm
Atkinson
Invited
39
Peak Users 40

65. Participant Feedback
Would like MORE
30%
Would like LESS
25%
level CORRECT
45%
Question: How did you
find the level of
commitment required?

66. Participant Feedback
93% completed questionnaire
75% structure “good”
90% course “correct length
80% interested in individual technology week

67. Statistics
600 messages on forum
200 emails sent via VLE
Average student working time 20 hours per week
Average user sessions per day:43
Average user sessions per day on weekdays:54
Average user sessions per day on weekends:16

68. Summary
A month long “Winter School” in February 2008 & 2009.
Use of support components
Adobe Connect, WebCT, GILDA t-Infrastructure, Digital
Library, NeSC People Registry.
Integration of Training Support services in workflow with
existing tools
4 technologies presentations and practicals
gLite, Globus, Condor, OGSA-DAI
28 students from 16 countries, 9 tutors from 4 countries
3 live presentations by leaders in the field
with chat sessions
High levels of satisfaction from students and presenters

69. Head in the clouds?
Dynamic (service) provisioning
How is it applicable to the NGS/Edinburgh?
Training
Rapidly deploy services for teaching
Isolate training from production
Other
Specialised research environments
Rapid deployment
Identify use cases and gather requirements

70. NGS 3 EWP2
“NGS Agile Deployment Environments”
EPSRC funded, 2 years
People
Matteo Turilli (OeRC, Oxford) [0.75 FTE]
Steve Thorn (NeSC, Edinburgh) [0.5 FTE]
David Fergussion (NeSC, Edinburgh) [WP Leader]

71. Overview (cont.)Realistic usage
Training event on virtualized infrastructure
Hosting infrastructure?
Amazon EC2 compatible
De facto standard currently, with open source
implementation
Ease of deployment
Eucalyptus, Nimbus and others
Hardware
Edinburgh: 8 cores 16+ dual cores
Oxford: 64 cores (older)

72. Eucalyptus
“Elastic Utility Computing Architecture Linking Your
Programs To Useful Systems”
Open source and Commercial
Amazon Web Services API compatible
EC2, storage - S3, Elastic Block Store (EBS)
Easy to install
Xen and KVM hypervisors
Commercial version supports others (inc. VMWare)

73. Eucalyptus architecture
Cloud controller
Entry point
Gathers information
Cluster controller
Schedules VM execution
Manages virtual network
Node controller
Controls VM execution
(Xen running on node)
 Storage controller (Walrus)
implements Amazon’s S3 interface

74. Prototype service
Eucalyptus 1.6.2 (current 2.0)
Migration in next few months
Call for users for prototype
> 20 groups expressed interest
> 25 registered users on system
Increasing constantly
May be reaching the limits of current support

75. Research domains
Social science
Population simulations (York, St Andrews)
Cloud interface development
Advanced teaching
Edinburgh (MSc)
Canfield (MSc)
Bioscience
Next gen sequencing, micro array
Taxonomic analysis
Geospatial analysis
Civil Engineering (flood risk management)
MyGrid on the cloud