FAQ
General
- What is MetaCentrum NGI?
- What is difference between MetaCentrum NGI and MetaCentrum VO?
- Whom do I contact in case I have any questions or problems regarding MetaCentrum VO or NGI?
- What is EGI?
Membership
- What are the benefits of becoming a MetaCentrum member?
- What are the prerequisites for becoming a MetaCentrum member?
Virtual Organizations
more EGI VO FAQs
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What is MetaCentrum NGI?
MetaCentrum, an activity of CESNET association, is the official Czech National Grid Initiative. More
What is difference between MetaCentrum NGI and MetaCentrum VO?
Meta Centrum NGI operates as a part of the European Grid Initiative (EGI.eu) with aim to enable coherent electronic access for researchers to all computational and data based resources and facilities in the Czech Republic, Europe, and worldwide. It operates with the following goals:
- Establish and coordinate a sustainable Czech Grid infrastructure as a dynamic network of resources across different locations and administrative domains, as a part of the pan-European infrastructure built in the framework of the EGI project,
- Establish an infrastructure compatible and interoperable with existing European and worldwide Grid frameworks,
- Enable coherent access for researchers to all computational and data based resources and facilities required to carry out their research, independent of resource or researcher location,
- Provide a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, support end-users, researchers, education centers, and resource providers,
- Represent the interests of the national Grid community towards other national and international bodies,
- Development of grid middleware and involvement in international grid infrastructure through participation in corresponding international projects.
MetaCentrum VO (http://metavo.metacentrum.cz) is catch-all virtual organization, which offers computational and storage resources to all MetaCentrum members.
Whom do I contact in case I have any questions or problems regarding MetaCentrum VO or NGI?
The European Grid Initiative (EGI) is a partnership between National Grid Initiatives (NGIs), which are responsible for grid infrastructure related matters in each participating country, and a coordinating body, the EGI organisation (EGI.eu), based in Amsterdam. Its central role is to facilitate the interaction and collaboration between NGIs.Within the EGI partnership, NGIs and EGI.eu are thus working together to operate and further develop a sustainable pan-European grid infrastructure, enabling optimal sharing of computing and data resources, and supporting collaborative scientific discoveries in the European Research Area (ERA).
What are the benefits of becoming a MetaCentrum member?
What are the prerequisites for becoming a MetaCentrum member?
No recommendation nor project approval and registration is needed. The new user is treated in a best effort way, giving him or her an opportunity to start using the resources to a reasonable extent. The scheudling policy takes care of the amount of CPU hours already consumed b ya particular user and decreases a priority of users with large portion of used resources giving more chance to newcomers or occasional users to have their jobs run fast. Also, users could have access to the priority queues through registering publications created with the use of MetaCentrum resources and having an acknowledgment paragraph (see https://metavo.metacentrum.cz/osobni/personal/publikace.do). This a way how users with high quality research are prioritized without hassle of registration and pre-allocation.
If you are part of a research community whose members are geographically apart, belong to independent organizations, and collaborate via electronic means to achieve a common goal, probably you are already part of a Virtual Organization (VO) without knowing. However, on GRIDs, VOs have the specificity that their members share computing resources. If the computing resources in your institute are not sufficient to your group needs, maybe the establishment of a VO within your research community is a good solution for you.
VO users can access computing resources in institutes where they are not known in person based on the VO membership records kept under the Virtual Organization Management Service (VOMS). List of VOs in EGI. Contact us: support@metacentrum.cz.
How to get computing resources for the VO?
In most of the places, VOs do not own physical resources but they own a right to use them. That right is earned according to the funding that sites receive from projects where VO members are involved. Therefore, sites do allocate a share of their ressources to a given VO depending on the funding they receive from local projects associated to that VO. This is the normal procedure on how newly VOs provide resources to the GRID. The GRID spirit behind is that everyone can use everybody resources as long as these resources aren't really needed.
If the VO has very few members without computing resources, there is always the possibility to ask external sites to support this VO. However, external sites only accept to do that if they get something in exchange. If you have something to offer, sites will probably consider opening their resources to your VO.