INDUSTRY

The UK National Grid Service (NGS) expanded further in November as Durham University joined as an affiliate member. Led by the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP), Durham University is now an NGS member enabling a wider use of the resources throughout the UK. Durham University is a Tier 2 site within EGEE, which means it is playing an important role in processing and analysing the data produced from the LHC, as well as being a member of the UK GridPP project and a founder member of the ScotGrid project. This means that Durham University has a great deal of experience of working hand in hand with other organisations on a national and international scale. Using fair-share algorithms to schedule and prioritise jobs, Durham University have enabled NGS access through their Particle Physics computing resources. This means that the NGS will have access to a cluster which provides over 700 job slots on new Quad Core Intel Xeon processors and over 30 terabytes of storage. Phil Roffe, Systems Manager of IPPP at Durham University said “joining the NGS is another step towards providing excellent computing facilities to enhance research in all academic areas. The Durham Particle Physics cluster has been extensively used by the GridPP community and we welcome the NGS aim to provide 'coherent electronic access for UK researchers to all computational and data based resources and facilities'. With the cluster already deployed in GridPP, the common infrastructure is in place to enable NGS access and widen the use of the facilities to other researchers in the UK. Becoming an NGS affiliate enables our resources and experience to be utilised further and at the same time enhance the facilities available to NGS users.”