Polish Infrastructure for Information Science Support in the European Research Space PL-Grid.

• Time frames: 01.01.2009 ? 31.12.2011
• Contract No: POIG.02.03.00-00-007/08-00
• Project homepage: http://www.plgrid.pl

The goal of the Project is to provide the Polish scientific community with an IT platform based on Grid computer clusters, enabling e-science research in various fields. This infrastructure will be both compatible and interoperable with existing European and worldwide Grid frameworks. The system will ensure scalability and enable the integration of additional local clusters, belonging to universities, research institutions and technology platforms. We foresee exploitation of PL-Grid by state authorities, crisis management teams and industrial partners.

The Project will establish a country-wide Polish Grid infrastructure supporting scientific research through integration of experimental data and results of advanced computer simulations carried out by geographically-dispersed teams.

PL-Grid aims at significantly extending the amount of computing resources provided to the Polish scientific community (by approximately 215 TFlops of computing power and 2500 TB of storage capacity) and constructing a Grid system that will facilitate effective and innovative use of the available resources. In this aspect, we will focus on exploitation of computational and storage facilities by virtual organizations and on implementing a comprehensive Grid resource management suite, comprising approximately 35 individual services. PL-Grid will draw upon the experience of European initiatives, such as EGEE and DEISA, the scientific results attained by individual partners and the outcome of R&D activities carried out within the project.

An important task will be to establish an Operations Center, responsible for provision of the PL-Grid infrastructure, extending support to its users and ensuring consistent quality of service during and beyond the project's life cycle.

PL-Grid will engage in collaboration with end users from its inception, providing training services for approximately 700 participants and undertaking joint development activities on new applications and domain-specific services.

We also intend to provide efficient access to computing resources for research teams operating outside national HPC centres. The emergence of the PL-Grid framework is consistent with European Commission policies which actively encourage development and integration of computing Grids.