DIRAC, EGI.eu and several NGIs are setting up a pilot service providing a single entry point to EGI’s distributed grid and cloud e­-Infrastructure.

The aim of the pilot is to develop a prototype of a full-scale DIRAC service for EGI. This experience will be used to develop Horizon 2020 proposals for the deployment, operation, and dissemination of a global DIRAC service connecting researchers to the e-Infrastructure. The service will connect existing science gateway solutions and application/domain specific VREs, as well as from DIRAC interactive portals.

The purpose is to demonstrate how DIRAC can help large well-established communities, as well as small research groups and individual scientists, to exploit the existing e-Infrastructure and boost their scientific output.

The pilot begins in February 2014, with the contributions from the Polish and French NGIs. A number of communities from different research fields have been contacted to join, including WeNMR, CaviGrid, the Pierre Auger Observatory and the EISCAT research infrastructure, amongst others. i-Marine, an e-Infrastructure set up to develop VREs for fisheries management and conservation of marine resources, is also interested and the Greek NGI is evaluating DIRAC to ease the migration of grid users to the Okeanos IaaS. Furthermore, several engineering groups requiring extra computing power for their applications connected to industrial and medical use cases will be served.