eInfraNet

eInfraNet
Name	eInfraNet
Type	Consortium
Founded	2010
Headquarters	Unknown
Area served	International
Key people	Unknown

eInfraNet

eInfraNet is an international research infrastructure consortium that connects distributed data centers, supercomputing facilities, and research networks to support large-scale scientific projects. It facilitates interoperability among national grid computing initiatives, regional cloud computing hubs, and transnational e-science collaborations. eInfraNet enables coordinated access for researchers affiliated with institutions such as the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the Max Planck Society, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Overview

eInfraNet functions as a federated fabric linking TERENA-era research networks, continental research and education networks like GÉANT and Internet2, and national initiatives including CESNET and SURFnet. It integrates resources from organizations such as the European Commission, the National Science Foundation, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The consortium aligns with standards from bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to enable compatibility with projects run by institutions including the European Space Agency and the CERN Openlab.

History

The concept of eInfraNet emerged amid early 21st-century efforts to federate grid computing projects started by groups such as Globus Toolkit developers, participants in the Open Grid Forum, and initiatives funded through programs like the FP7 and Horizon 2020 framework. Early partners included laboratories that later joined alliances with the European Research Council and national agencies like the UK Research and Innovation and the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Milestones intersected with events such as the expansion of PRACE and the evolution of XSEDE infrastructure models.

Architecture and Components

The architecture of eInfraNet comprises federated identity providers interoperating with Shibboleth and OAuth implementations, distributed storage clusters compatible with Ceph and Lustre, and compute resources exposing SLURM and PBS scheduling interfaces. Networking components include high-bandwidth links deployed by operators like Level 3 Communications and interconnects consistent with protocols standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Management stacks coordinate via APIs influenced by specifications from the Open Grid Forum and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, while monitoring integrates tools pioneered by projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.

Services and Capabilities

eInfraNet offers services such as federated identity management, distributed data repository access, and workload orchestration for simulations in disciplines represented by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and the Large Hadron Collider collaborations. It enables data transfer acceleration leveraging research network capabilities used by Square Kilometre Array pathfinders and supports provenance tracking with models related to work by the Digital Curation Centre and the Research Data Alliance. Portals and science gateways draw on toolkits used at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Governance and Funding

Governance structures combine elements from consortia like CERN Council models and board frameworks similar to the European Research Area. Funding streams historically derive from programs administered by the European Commission, grants from the National Science Foundation, and contributions from national agencies such as the Austrian Science Fund and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Stakeholder representation includes members from universities like University of Cambridge, research institutes such as the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, and intergovernmental bodies including the OECD.

Adoption and Use Cases

Adoption spans disciplines and projects including computational tasks for the Human Genome Project successors, climate modeling groups collaborating with the World Meteorological Organization, and astrophysics consortia associated with the European Southern Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Life sciences laboratories at institutions like Harvard University and ETH Zurich use eInfraNet-enabled workflows, while engineering simulations draw on resources similar to those at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Security and Privacy

Security frameworks follow practices advocated by organizations such as ENISA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and incorporate incident response coordination reminiscent of the FIRST association. Privacy and data protection align with legal regimes influenced by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and standards comparable to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act for cross-border biomedical data, while compliance mechanisms reference policies used by the European Data Protection Board.

Category:Research infrastructure