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U.K. scientific community looks to National Grid Service for raw computing power
As Grid computing enters the mainstream, Oracle’s industry-leading data management technologies are supporting a U.K.-wide initiative to provide the scientific and academic community with a high-performing computing infrastructure for data-intensive research projects.
When the U.K. government launched the U.K. e-Science Programme back in 2001, Grid Computing was still in its infancy – an experimental technology confined mainly to computing centers in the
world’s major scientific academic institutions.
But over the last few years, Grids have successfully emerged from the world of academia and are proving themselves to be a practical solution to two modern computing problems. First of all, they can provide the temporary but huge bursts of computational power needed to process massive datasets. Secondly, they can greatly increase the efficiency of an organisation’s computing assets by allowing them to
be deployed in a shared, dynamic, flexible, and virtualized way.
Grid computing is now becoming a fundamental part of the United Kingdom’s scientific research infrastructure. Three organizations dedicated to supporting U.K. e-research, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) came together in 2003 to fund the country’s National Grid Service (NGS). This service provides educational and research institutions across the U.K. with standardized access to data management and computing resources and collaborative computing facilities. The NGS also provides a national ‘gateway’ to international collaborative projects, by linking to related e-infrastructures
internationally.
The mission of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of Information and Communications Technology to support education and research. The CCLRC, meanwhile, is one of Europe's largest multidisciplinary research organizations, supporting scientists and engineers worldwide. It operates world-class large-scale research facilities, provides strategic advice to the government on their development, and manages international research projects in support of a broad cross-section
of the U.K. research community.
Oracle’s industry-leading data management technology has played a crucial role in the National Grid Service infrastructure since 2005. The infrastructure is based on Oracle Database 10g Release 2, and relies on Oracle Real Application Clusters to ensure the flexibility, scalability and high availability that the service requires to serve a wide and demanding
community of scientific users.
Gordon Brown, Database Services Manager at CCLRC, praises the performance and reliability of the Oracle database infrastructure. “Oracle offers the NGS database users what they need; high availability, excellent performance and all the tools required to access their data how they want to,” he said. “As Database Services Group Leader, I know my team can administer the database with the powerful features of Grid Control and make
sure we offer a reliable and professional service.”
Elsewhere, the registration process uses Oracle Application Express, while Oracle Grid Control is widely used for monitoring processor resource allocation across the service, and Oracle RMAN is used for backups. Several Oracle 10g features, including Java, XML and Oracle Spatial, help users of the NGS database to run applications, process
data sets, and store and share data.
One user of the NGS’s Oracle-based services is Professor Sally Price of University College London, who leads a Basic
Technology project (
www.cposs.org.uk ) which is developing a computational method of predicting the polymorphism of organic molecules. “NGS hosts our database of Computed Crystal Structures and the portal that stores the output files from many different computational studies,” she explains. “The NGS has enabled us to store many hundreds of data files and allow our users easy, secure access to this data via the Crystal Navigator
web interface.”
The service is today ready to enter its next phase, NGS-2. NGS-2 will significantly increase the compute and storage capacity of the
NGS, enabling it to provide resources to data-intensive applications.
Oracle is ready to support the new data management and processing challenges that NGS2 will bring. Oracle also remains committed to contributing to the U.K. e-Science programme and to its related R&D activity across Europe, by helping to provide a robust e-infrastructure based on trusted collaboration between Oracle and the
U.K. National Grid Service.
"The NGS is a great example of role Oracle technologies can play in the Scientific Grid Computing world," said Graeme Kerr, EMEA Oracle in R&D Programme Technical Architect. "It is clear that key parts of U.K. scientific research are relying on Oracle Grid Technology in the same way that U.K. industry is. I look forward to this role being strengthened
with the NGS-2". |
