GLENNA: The Nordic cloud (EOSC hub week, Malaga, 16 - 20 April 2018)

1. GLENNA – The Nordic
Cloud
Dan Still
Glenna Project manager
NeIC and CSC
Dan.Still@CSC.fi

2. Together the Nordic countries are
tackling e-infrastructure challenges
beyond singular national capabilities
 Nordic Tier-1 (aka NDGF)
 Tryggve (2)
 Glenna (2)
 CodeRefinery
 DeepDive
 EISCAT 3D (Data) Support
Since 2012 as part of NordForsk
NeIC Open Call 2018
Input for the 2020-2025 strategy (deadline 15 May):
Directions and goals for e-infrastructure in the Nordic region
Nordic Open Science Cloud
NOSC: new thin layer tying NeIC activities together
Some projects and their (potential future) partners:
NeIC Funding
2017: 55 MNOK

3. GLENNA
The goal of the project is to share knowledge and set best
practices on managing cloud services and to create a Nordic
federated cloud service, driven by the need of the Nordic
researchers.

4. Glenna Cloud Platforms and Services
4
Containers as a Service (CaaS):
Uninett Norway
Rahti Container Cloud CSC Finland
Software as a Service (SaaS):
Lifeportal UiO Norway
IaaS Cloud Data: data.deic.dk
DeIC Denmark
University of Iceland: Geymsla.hi.is
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
CSC - Finland, SNIC - Sweden, Uninett
Sigma2 - Norway

5. The Glenna Environment

6. The Kalmar2 metadata service retired in April 2017 and subsequently access is
provided through eduGAIN. Services also utilize the UNINETT service platform,
Dataporten (Norwegian for "datagate"),which is a shared component of the
Norwegian education sector which connects data sources and end-user applications.
Dataporten features are:
 New interface to service providers that are also suitable for data access.
 OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect.
 The same token provided by authentication can be used to reach all data sources the service has access to. Great potential
and simplification for service developers.
 Group API. More context about the user.
 Better support for mobile applications.
 100% self service.
 Everyone can create services. No payment contract or manual approval. Access Control for APIs (also third party APIs).
 Multiple authentication sources:
 SAML 2.0
 eduGAIN (International Login)
 Social Networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
GLENNA AAI

7. Glenna Use Cases: Harmonie MUSC
• HARMONIE is a collaborative NWP development of many
European countries, including all Nordic countries
• HARMONIE MUSC = single-column version of HARMONIE
• widely used R&D tool in meteorological institute and
collaborative universities
Benefits:
• much improved overall performance in the installation and
configuration as a cloud image => more time on actual research
• no platform induced differences => inter-comparison between
different user experiments straightforward
• input data sets available into the cloud storage => no tedious data
transfers
• pave the way towards an open science type of use of the
HARMONIE system => growing need due to emerging open NWP data
in Nordics
=> way to improve the whole HARMONIE system
HARMONIE

8. Glenna Use Cases: Scientific Application as a Service
Hellander, S. Toor, P. Eeerola,
H. Jonsson, T. Lindén
Project Goals: to better understand how scientific applications should be designed
and implemented for secure and efficient execution in hybrid cloud environments.
Questions include:
 How to design Master/Slave hybrid setups where VMs reside in or migrate
between different clouds?
 Where should the multi-cloud logic reside in such hybrid cloud applications - at
the application or IaaS level?
 How to build elastic scientific applications in a sensible manner?
 Can runtime tools be developed to understand application performance in
(hybrid) cloud environments?
8

9. In Preparation for EOSC
The EOSC-hub will deliver a catalogue of services, software and data from the
EGI Federation, EUDAT CDI, INDIGO-DataCloud and major research e-
Infrastructures. The project has a large number of partners, including CSC,
DeIC, SNIC and UNINETT Sigma2.
NeIC has endorsed the general principles of the EOSC Declaration and EOSC
has been discussed by the NeIC Board during 2017. Several NeIC projects
already align with the aims of EOSC.
Opportunities for a “Nordic open science cloud NOSC” are being explored to
investigate the interest in a common Nordic approach.
https://neic.no/news/2018/03/23/neic-position-paper/