Prep-DIRAC-VRE: Preparation for 'DIRAC Virtual Research Environments'

DIRAC and EGI.eu have started in December 2013 a very ambitious initiative to help already e-connected and new communities to extend and improve their experience while accessing exiting e-infrastructure. For that purpose, and in collaboration with several National Grid Initiatives, NGI, a transversal activity has been launched. DIRAC interware allows, among other things, to deploy and operate scalable services providing a single entry point to any number of distributed computing and storage resources, integrating and making interoperable grid, cloud or volunteer resources coming from any combination of public or private providers.

Based on the previous DIRAC experience with very large single community dedicated global services (like those operated for LHCb, Belle II, CTA, or
ILC) as well as with large national multi-community ones (France-Grilles or Ibergrid), a unique pan-european DIRAC service has been deployed
providing seamless access to the complete european distributed e-Infrastructure (and beyond) and has been offered as single entry point for any Virtual Research Community, VRC.

This proposal aims to build on this experience and extend the collaboration with potentially VRCs from any field, as the experience in these last months shows. During the first months, the use cases from Life-Science Virtual Organizations:
- enmr.eu (600 users)
- biomed (335 users)
- vlemed (36 users)
- lsgrid (26 users)
- mosgrid (https://mosgrid.de/)
- pneumogrid (www.pneumogrid.de)
- medigrid (http://www.medigrid.de/)
That already have shown interest to participate on the proposal. And later on produce periodic calls, as well as dissemination and training events, to
reach new communities.

For this purpose a collaboration between publicly and privately funded partners is being build in Spain and beyond. The partners joining this proposal will commit to engage with research communities of any size and field with the purpose of helping them to transparently access the existing e-Infrastructure as fundamental tool for the rapid advance of the research and knowledge.

The aim of this proposal is to get sufficient funding at the spanish level to vertebrate a solid group that after the leadership of Dr. Ricardo Graciani,
Coordinator of the DIRAC Consortium, will lead the international effort necessary to achieve this goal.

DIRAC and EGI.eu have started in December 2013 a very ambitious initiative to help already e-connected and new communities to extend and improve their experience while accessing exiting e-infrastructure. For that purpose, and in collaboration with several National Grid Initiatives, NGI, a transversal activity has been launched. DIRAC interware allows, among other things, to deploy and operate scalable services providing a single entry point to any number of distributed computing and storage resources, integrating and making interoperable grid, cloud or volunteer resources coming from any combination of public or private providers. Based on the previous DIRAC experience with very large single community dedicated global services (like those operated for LHCb, Belle II, CTA, or ILC) as well as with large national multi-community ones (France-Grilles or Ibergrid), a unique pan-european DIRAC service has been deployed providing seamless access to the complete european distributed e-Infrastructure (and beyond) and has been offered as single entry point for any Virtual Research Community, VRC. This proposal aims to build on this experience and extend the collaboration with potentially VRCs from any field, as the experience in these last months shows. During the first months, the use cases from Life-Science Virtual Organizations: - enmr.eu (600 users) - biomed (335 users) - vlemed (36 users) - lsgrid (26 users) - mosgrid (https://mosgrid.de/) - pneumogrid (www.pneumogrid.de) - medigrid (http://www.medigrid.de/) That already have shown interest to participate on the proposal. And later on produce periodic calls, as well as dissemination and training events, to reach new communities. For this purpose a collaboration between publicly and privately funded partners is being build in Spain and beyond. The partners joining this proposal will commit to engage with research communities of any size and field with the purpose of helping them to transparently access the existing e-Infrastructure as fundamental tool for the rapid advance of the research and knowledge. The aim of this proposal is to get sufficient funding at the spanish level to vertebrate a solid group that after the leadership of Dr. Ricardo Graciani, Coordinator of the DIRAC Consortium, will lead the international effort necessary to achieve this goal. - Tomás Fernández Pena