Presented by Bob Jones of CERN at the CORBEL Compute (Cloud) Workshop, hosted at BBMRI-ERIC HQ in Graz, Austria, October 19th, 2016.

2. Helix Nebula – The Science Cloud with Grant Agreement 687614 is a Pre-Commercial Procurement Action funded by H2020 Framework Programme
Progress of the
Helix Nebula Science Cloud
PCP project
19 October 2016
Bob Jones
CERN
IT department
23/11/2016
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The content of this presentation is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views expressed by the European Commission or its services.

3. The Helix Nebula Science Cloud
public-private partnership

4. D. Giordano HN GA8 21/09/2016
Series of short procurements
of increasing size and complexity
4
Augmenting CERN’s scientific computing
programme with commercial cloud services

5. D. Giordano WLCG Workshop 9/10/2016
CERN cloud procurements 2015-2016
5

6. 6
The Helix Nebula Initiative
Brings together
• research organisations,
• data providers,
• publicly funded e-
infrastructures,
• commercial cloud service
providers
In a hybrid cloud with
procurement and governance
approaches suitable for the
dynamic cloud market In-house

7. Major challenges
What if I get
locked in? Are there relevant
standards I should be
looking into?
What
happens to
my data?
How do I get
a good deal?
What happens to
my IT staff?
How can I compare
contracts & SLAs?
What is
PCP?
What are
the others
doing?
How can I allocate
costs?
What
services do
I need?
1. Cloud computing is disrupting the way IT resources are provisioned
2. In-house resources, publicly funded e-infrastructure and commercial cloud
services are not integrated to provide a seamless environment
3. Current organisational and financial models are not appropriate
4. The new way of procuring cloud services is also a matter of skills and education
5. Legal impediments exist

8. Provides a landscape of cloud procurement in the
European public research sector
Makes pragmatic recommendations for the
procurement of cloud services by PROs in Europe
Provides a guide to cloud procurement, supported by
best practices adopted worldwide
Proposes actions within the pillar three of the Digital
Single Market Strategy which focus on maximising the
growth potential of the digital economy
The PICSE Roadmap
4/5/2016 11
www.picse.eu/roadmap

9. HNSciCloud Joint Pre-Commercial Procurement
Bob Jones, CERN 9
Procurers: CERN, CNRS, DESY, EMBL-EBI, ESRF,
IFAE, INFN, KIT, STFC, SURFSara
Experts: Trust-IT & EGI.eu
The group of procurers have committed
• Procurement funds
• Manpower for testing/evaluation
• Use-cases with applications & data
• In-house IT resources
Resulting services will be made available to end-
users from many research communities
Co-funded via H2020 Grant Agreement 687614
Total procurement budget >5M€

10. What will be procured
A hybrid cloud platform for the European research community
11/23/2016 10
HNSciCloud
PCP
Source:CloudComputingforGovies,DLTSolutions,
DavidBlankenhorn,VanRistauandCaronBeesley
Combining services at the IaaS level to support science workflows
The R&D services to be developed are to be integrated with
Resources in data centres operated by the buyers group
European-scale publicly funded e-Infrastructures

11. Challenges
Innovative IaaS level cloud services integrated with procurers in-house
resources and public e-infrastructure to support a range of scientific
workloads
Compute and Storage
support a range of virtual machine and container configurations including HPC
working with datasets in the petabyte range
Network Connectivity and Federated Identity Management
provide high-end network capacity via GEANT for the whole platform with common
identity and access management
Service Payment Models
explore a range of purchasing options to determine those most appropriate for the
scientific application workloads to be deployed
Bob Jones, CERN 11

12. HNSciCloud project phases
Preparation
•Analysis of requirements,
current market offers and
relevant standards
•Build stakeholder group
•Develop tender material
Implementation and sharing
Jan’16 Dec’18
Each step is competitive - only contractors that successfully
complete the previous step can bid in the next
4/5/2016 12
200+ downloads
70+ requests
for clarifications
4 Designs
3 Prototypes
2 Pilots
Call-off
Feb’17
Call-off
Oct’17
Tender
Jul’16

13. Bob Jones, CERN 13
Research Infrastructures are
facilities, resources or
services of a unique
nature identified by
European research
communities to
conduct top-level research
activities in all fields
Interested Research
Infrastructures:
• EPOS, ESA, ESS
• clusters: CORBEL,
ASTERICS-OBELICS
Will form an observer group

14. Launch event
ICRI 2016, Cape Town - South Africa
e-INFRASTRUCTURE
Research Infrastructure as key nodes of e-Infrastructure for Research
• Advanced e-Infrastructure of all Research Infrastructures
• Optimal interfaces between RIs and the external e-Infrastructure
(Networks, Cloud, HPC, HTC)
• Data Quality assessment at RIs and setting quality standards for broad use
• Data access to “enabling data” i.e. data completed with adequate
metadata, traceable origin, FAIR
• Long Term preservation of “useful data”
• Key role of “public” institutions and interplay with commercial
clouds/repositories
Giorgio Rossi
Chair

15. Helge Meinhard, CERN, 17 March 2016
• Foreseen users:
- bioinformaticians who will do
most of the large scale processing
- less tech-savvy end-users will
perform analysis
• Data types: genotype &
phenotype information.
Data can be assumed to be
anonymised but it is still sensitive

16. Helge Meinhard, CERN, 17 March 2016
Long tail of science
• Foreseen users: individual
researchers/small labs in the need of
accessing highly performant IT
resources to analyse their data on
• Data types: Due to the nature of the
use-cases, the exact type of datasets
can’t be predicted upfront. However,
the infrastructure will need to ensure
datasets will be kept private to the
single user, with the possibly to share
them among other users / publicly
provided sufficient authorisation is
granted.

17. Helge Meinhard, CERN, 17 March 2016
• Foreseen users: the EuroBioImaging
consortia through the representatives in
EMBL
• Data types: private and public datasets
consisting of images coming from
human cells, Drosophila and fungi, with
a plan to further extend the coverage
adding more datasets and cell types. No
sensitive data are currently foreseen.

18. European Open Science Cloud
11/23/2016 18
https://bit.ly/cloudeu

19. Widening access (2/2):
e-Infras as aggregators of demand
19
EOSC
Scientific Users
Commercial
services
e-Infrastructures
EU H2020
funding
€
€ Procurement
Grants
Augusto Burgueño Arjona, head of the Unit "eInfrastructure & Science Cloud“, DG CNECT, EC, Sept’16

20. Widening access (1/2):
e-Infrastructures as service providers
20
EOSC
Scientific Users Industry Public
Sector
e-Infrastructures
Augusto Burgueño Arjona, head of the Unit "eInfrastructure & Science Cloud“, DG CNECT, EC, Sept’16
HNI 2.0: Building value chains with data intensive science