EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE)

EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE)
Name	EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE)
Abbreviation	EGEE
Formation	2004
Dissolution	2010
Headquarters	CERN
Region served	Europe, worldwide
Parent organization	European Commission

EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) was a pan-European research infrastructure project that coordinated middleware, services, and operational practice to deliver a sustained production grid for scientific computing. It aimed to integrate computing resources across national laboratories, universities, and industry partners to support large-scale distributed computing for projects in high-energy physics, bioinformatics, earth science, and other domains. EGEE linked major research organizations and fostered adoption of grid technologies by providing operational support, certification, and training.

Background and Objectives

EGEE was initiated under the aegis of the European Commission and was coordinated by CERN with partners including INFN, CNRS, DESY, and STFC. Motivated by computational needs from experiments such as Large Hadron Collider collaborations and projects involving institutions like European Space Agency, EGEE sought to provide interoperable middleware, operational procedures, and policies to enable resource sharing among sites like GridKa, PIC (Centro de Supercomputación), and national research infrastructures. Objectives included enabling scientific collaboration among consortia such as ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, and ALICE; promoting standards from bodies like Open Grid Forum; and aligning with programmes supported by the Seventh Framework Programme and initiatives such as EGI.

Project Structure and Partners

EGEE was organized into technical work packages, operations units, and user communities, coordinated by a central team at CERN and involving partners such as European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Max Planck Society, CNRS/IN2P3, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Forschungszentrum Jülich, TRIUMF, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and industry collaborators like IBM and HP. Governance included steering committees with representatives from European Commission directorates and national funding agencies such as INFN and DFG. EGEE collaborated with grid projects including gLite, Globus Toolkit, and regional initiatives like NorduGrid and Campus Grid programmes. Partnerships extended to data centres such as CERN Data Centre and national grid infrastructures like France Grilles and GridPP.

Infrastructure and Technologies

The EGEE infrastructure integrated computing and storage resources through middleware stacks such as gLite and components interoperating with Globus Toolkit, UNICORE, and ARC (Advanced Resource Connector). Core services included workload management, data management via LCG File Catalog concepts, information systems based on BDII, and security relying on X.509 certificates and the VOMS authorization model. The middleware interfaced with high-throughput clusters at sites like European Grid Infrastructure nodes and relied on network backbones such as GÉANT and national research and education networks including JANET and SURFnet. EGEE also adopted standards promoted by W3C for metadata exchange and collaborated with projects like HEPGrid and BioMedGrid to integrate domain-specific tools.

Research Applications and Use Cases

EGEE supported a broad set of scientific communities. High-energy physics experiments such as ATLAS and CMS used the grid for Monte Carlo simulation and data analysis workflows linked to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid model. Life sciences projects like EMBL-EBI collaborations, Human Genome Project follow-on analyses, and structural biology initiatives used EGEE for sequence alignment and molecular docking. Earth observation communities including European Space Agency programmes ran climate simulations and satellite data processing. Other use cases involved CERN detector simulation, LOFAR radio astronomy pipelines, and computational chemistry projects associated with EPSRC. Demonstrator applications included distributed virtual organisations similar to VO models and portals integrating tools such as Taverna and gUSE.

Operations, Support and Services

EGEE established an operational model with a central helpdesk, regional operations centres, site certification procedures, and service level agreements involving partners like SFT units at member laboratories. Training and outreach were provided through summer schools, workshops with institutions such as University of Manchester and ETH Zurich, and collaboration with standards bodies including Open Grid Forum. Monitoring and accounting were implemented via tools that interfaced with Nagios-style systems and accounting frameworks compatible with GStat and ROD concepts. Security incident response coordinated with certificate authorities such as TERENA and national computer emergency response teams like CERT-EU.

Outcomes, Impact and Legacy

EGEE delivered a production-quality grid infrastructure that contributed to the operational experience underlying the creation of the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) and informed cloud transition strategies at organisations including CERN and EMBL. The project demonstrated federated resource sharing models used by collaborations such as LHCb and spurred middleware development in gLite and interoperability work with Globus Toolkit. EGEE outcomes influenced standards at the Open Grid Forum and seeded successor research infrastructures in disciplines represented by ESFRI roadmaps. Its legacy persists in operational practices, trained personnel across centres like GridKa and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and in production services that supported landmark results from Large Hadron Collider experiments and multidisciplinary scientific analyses.

Category:Grid computing Category:European Commission projects