European Middleware Initiative (EMI)
Abstract
The European Middleware Initiative (EMI) is a joint project of the middleware consortia gLite, ARC, UNICORE and dCache. Funded by the European Commission, the major goal of this project is to harmonize a set of EMI products out of the different middleware components by providing streamlined EMI releases. The aim of this Future Grid project is to set up a permanent Testbed of EMI releases for exploration by US partners in order to disseminate the activities happening in Europe. Training material will be provided so that the EMI products can be tested and evaluated by potential US stakeholders using FutureGrid for a hands-on experience with European middleware.
Intellectual Merit
While the European middleware evolved over a decade mostly driven by European research communities, the use of FutureGrid might reveal additional requirements in order to satisfy more and more emerging truly global research communities. Understanding and analysing potentially different approaches to distributed computing and possibly different used techniques represents therefore an intellectual challenge.
Broader Impact
Disseminate the existence of European middleware within the US and exploring potentially synergetic products provided by FutureGrid to limit duplicate developments and to engage in fruitful collaborations in order to support the requirements of global research communities.
Use of FutureGrid
Firstly, a set of EMI members will install products out of the EMI 1 release and after setting up security environments (e.g. certificates, etc.), we intend to provide training material so that FutureGrid users can actually try-out European middleware out of the EMI releases.
Scale Of Use
Small and very limited use initially and during installation procedures. For preparation of large events like the EMI Technical Conference, we potentially would like to ask for more resources to handle a peak of users during tutorial sessions.
Futuregrid is a resource provider for