The 6th SIG-CISS meeting has been organized and first informal meet up after a long break, mostly due to the pandemics. It took place on February 16, 2022, online on Zoom.
The video recording of the whole event is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/07yz0gfwlhwbmu1/video1988169639.mp4?dl=0 .
The event gathered together the SIC-CISS community and discussed how to resume the activities and re-build the community after the long break.
An opening, introductory presentation has been shown by the SIG chair, to wrap up the goals and current stand of the activities, as well as to describe the evolving landscape around the NRENs Cloud community. Some NRENs have put out a white paper stating their position on the Community Cloud.
The position paper is available here: CommunityClouds4NRENS2021_v2.pdf
The presentation has reminded about the goals and context for the SIG, described the latetst development in the Cloud landscape, and made proposal for the work to be implemented in future:
- Collaborate with the GN4-3 Community Cloud task to
- prototype the operation of services federated through Community Clouds infrastructures
- define a common AAI framework for user registration, authentication authorization on Cloud - in compliance with the AARC BPA
- implement specific applications workflows (of interest for our community) on the Geant Cloud Flow to showcase and promote adoption
- create a Community Cloud toolkit, enclosing a high level architectural blueprint, ensuring interoperability among different community cloud infrastructures
- Identify interesting Proof of Concepts on new service/tools/technologies of potential interest for the community
- E.g. IRODS, Persistent Identifiers and Storage Services
- Start a gap analysis on the missing or critical bits in the provisioning of Cloud services via Community Clouds and define a strategy to overcome current issues
- e.g. A full fledged, operational accounting platform
- e.g. A detailed analysis of the policy, legal, security issues related to running Community Cloud services [ does it already exist anywhere ?]
The NRENs currently committing to work on Community Cloud are the ones colored in red in the map: SUNET, CSC, SURF, PSNC, CESNET, SWITCH, GARR, GRNET, KIFU.
During the SIG, the NRENs attending decided to propose a BoF on the Community Clouds at the forthcoming TNC22 Conference : https://bit.ly/sig-bof .
The presentation was followed by Mentimeter session to ask the audience about their point of view on possible coordinated Cloud activities within the SIG.
The results of the mentimeter session are available here:
The results of the Mentimeter session confirmed the interest by the community to engage in the SIG, which is first of all welcome by all as a discussion forum to share hands-on experiences and best practices on the Cloud. Secondly, activities suggested by the NRENs involved in the GÉANT Community Cloud have alsoo been acknowledged as very welcome.
The community is still engaged in many different scientific domains, and it is currently working to support the following User Community on the Cloud and through the NREN's cloud activities:
Some (the majority of) NRENs belonging to GÉANT answered they are providing Cloud services also behind the national borders, to non-national users:
Many NRENs stated they are providing or planning to provide Cloud-based AAI components:
This showed that there is a very significant potential to share experiences within the SIG, and to fruitfully collaborate on the Cloud.