One of the key aims of the HBP is to build a Research Infrastructure (RI) to support research and development by the neuroscience communities. This RI strongly relies on e-infrastructure services to enable neuroscientists, e.g. to
- Deploy community-specific Platform services that are typically web-based and are in the future branded as EBRAINS services
- Facilitate curation of data
- Run large-scale, data intensive, interactive multi-scale brain simulations (up to the scale of a full human brain)
- Manage the large amounts of data used and produced by simulations and in experiments
- Manage complex workflows comprising concurrent simulation, data analysis and visualisation workloads
The generic e-infrastructure services including HPC, Cloud and data services are being provided by the ICEI project. The portfolio of ICEI services comprises of Scalable Computing Services, Interactive Computing Services, Virtual Machine Services, Active Data Repositories and Archival Data Repositories. These services are integrated through a relatively thin layer of federation services, including Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (AAI) services and the Fenix User and Resource Management (FURMS) services. Enabling a flexible composition of these e-infrastructure services is key to adjust to the changing needs of the EBRAINS RI.
Using Fenix e-infrastructure services, the HBP is deploying a variety of Platform services that are largely specific for the neuroscience community. During SGA2, such services have been developed in different Subprojects. The HPAC Platform specification focuses on a sub-set of services that are crucial to enable complex workflows that exploit high-end computing, networking and storage resources in a distributed and federated e-infrastructure. The following services have been architected and documented in deliverable SGA2 Deliverable D7.1.1:
- Software deployment services (SWD): These services facilitate the availability of HBP software products across the Fenix IT infrastructure
- Developer services (DEV): Services needed for software development including standard source code management systems, bug tracking systems and continuous integration systems
- Database services (DB): Structured and unstructured database (DB) and data base management system (DBMS) used for storing HBP/EBRAINS data
- Data management (DMGT): Interfaces to information about data stored in Fenix Archival Data Repositories and their transfer and federation for different Platform services
- Monitoring services for Platforms (MONP): Tools and services that allow Platform users and the Platforms themselves to access information on the availability of various Platform services
- Visualisation services (VIZ): Application-specific and HPC visualisation services for end-users and Platform developers
Providing a more specific design description of each of these services is in progress. This work is performed in close conjunction with an analysis of use cases.
HPAC/FENIX SGA2 architecture document
This result provides an architecture for the High Performance Analytics and Computing (HPAC) Platform. It describes a set of Platform services that are being realised on top of the e-infrastructure services provided by the ICEI project involving five leading supercomputing data centres in Europe. The initial specification was provided as Deliverable D7.1.1 (referred to as “HPAC/FENIX SGA2 architecture document v1”). Later a complementary document was produced (referred to as “HPAC/FENIX SGA2 architecture document v2”) that assesses the current status of the different services, the connections to other documents produced by SP7 during SGA2 as well as an initial list of Platform service specifications including recommendations for next steps in SGA3.
SP7 use case and requirements documentation
Set of science and Use Cases that has been collected throughout SGA2 as well as within the ICEI project. In this context, the documentation of the science and use cases has been augmented with an analysis of the specific needs for services described in component C2669 “HPAC/Fenix SGA2 architecture document v1”.
HPAC SGA2 Platform validation report
Collection of test definitions aiming for a validation of the HPAC Platform as well as a documentation of the test results collected by the end of SGA2.