D6.5: First Report on Collaborations with e-Infrastructures and CoE
Creators: name: Rouchon, Olivier
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2018
Subjects: Deliverable
HPC
Research infrastructure
Data management
Training
Security

description: This deliverable presents the existing and new activities between PRACE and complementary e-Infrastructures with the aim to build an integrated Europe-wide e-Infrastructure for our users. The focus has been on the continuation and further development of the collaboration on security and data management topics.<br> PRACE has been collaborating on security with other e-Infrastructures from its beginning. This includes cooperation with the major European organizations (EGI, EUDAT, GÉANT, Human Brain Project), as well as with Centres of Excellence (CoEs) such as EoCoE, POP or BioExcel. There are also some ongoing preliminary discussions with worldwide consortiums (XSEDE and RIST).<br> Workshops attended by representatives from EGI, EUDAT, GÉANT, NRENs, PRACE as well as US participants, are held regularly to organize these partnerships. A Steering Committee, in which PRACE is actively engaged, coordinates the follow-up activities of this forceful collaboration, organised in working groups, which cover specific topics such as networks, authentication and security, data storage, training, etc. PRACE has a long history of collaboration with these e-Infrastructures, and has been using the services these e-Infrastructures provide in various domains in which it has interest.<br> For data services, PRACE collaborates with EUDAT, which offers a service catalogue complementing PRACE in order to fulfil user needs during the full research data life cycle. During the past year, some integration in the areas of data transfer, storage and sharing has been implemented as four data pilots were run as part of the DECI-13 call, and another two have been launched after the DECI-14 call. A Data Management Plan template has been used to ease requirements gathering during the early phase of each pilot and its systematic use is now highly recommended. The feedback and results of the first four pilots have been presented during the EUDAT conference in Porto in January 2018. The need for cross PRACE and EUDAT trainings has been identified, some have been delivered to support data pilots. This collaboration is increasing with EUDAT delivering some sessions in PRACE training events and vice versa.<br> Regarding authentication and authorisation services, PRACE is considering to use services provided by the Identity Provider (IdP) federations which exist for educational organisations in several countries and which are also federated in eduGAIN. Working with external IdPs can enhance the security of the PRACE infrastructure because users do not have to use separate credentials for PRACE access. Also, credential misuse may be noticed earlier as more services will rely on the same credentials. This task follows other activities in this area, especially those of the AARC project which is coordinated by GÉANT. Feedback has been provided on the requirements PRACE has for the acceptance of authentication services provided by external IdPs.<br> For security alert and incident management, PRACE has been collaborating with EGI and EUDAT for a long time. This cooperation will continue through the WISE community initiative.