Blue-Cloud D4.6 - Blue Cloud VRE Operation Report (Release 2)

M. Assante, L. Candela, P. Pagano, R. Cirillo, A. Dell'Amico, L. Frosini, L. Lelii, F. Mangiacrapa, G. Panichi, F. Sinibaldi

Virtual Research Environment  Science Gateway  Operation Activity 

The Blue-Cloud project developed a cyber platform bringing together and providing access to multidisciplinary data from observations and models, analytical tools, and computing facilities essential to support research to better understand and manage the many aspects of ocean sustainability. The Blue-Cloud platform architecture consists of two major families of components: (a) the Blue Cloud Data Discovery and Access service to serve federated discovery and access to 'blue data' infrastructures, and (b) the Blue Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE) to provide a Blue Cloud VRE as a federation of computing platforms and analytical services. This Deliverable D4.6 "Blue Cloud VRE Operation (Release 2)" is the revised and updated version of the D4.1 "Blue Cloud VRE Operation (Release 1)" [10]. It reports on the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE) by complementing the architecture and infrastructure described in [9], where the constituents have been discussed. Specifically, this deliverable focuses on how the components have been exploited and operated to support the development of the Blue-Cloud gateway https://blue-cloud.d4science.org, its underlying infrastructure, and the VLabs. 9 Blue-Cloud VLabs were created and operated in the first period, while an additional 5 Blue-Cloud VLabs were created and operated in the second reporting period, from M17 (February 2021) to M35 (September 2022), bringing the total on 14 operational VLabs. Two VLabs of the second reporting period are specifically conceived to support the developments of the Blue-Cloud Demonstrators: (i) The Plankton Genomics VLab has been developed in the context of the Demonstrator #2, and (ii) The Marine Environmental Indicators Dev VLab has been developed in the context of the Demonstrator #3 - Marine Environmental Indicators. In order to support the Blue-Cloud Hackathon1 event held in February 2022 the (iii) Blue-Cloud Hackathon VLab has been developed. Finally, in the framework of the Blue-Cloud synergies programme two additional VLabs were developed as pilots to support the work of (iv) the JERICO-CORE multi-platform research infrastructure dedicated to a holistic appraisal of coastal marine system changes, and (v) the JONAS initiative, addressing the issue of underwater noise in the Atlantic Seas. These working environments are serving more than 1,300 users in total spread across more than 20 countries. Up to mid of September 2022, a total of more than 25,700 working sessions have been executed, with an average of 1,286 working sessions per month since the start of the Blue-Cloud project in October 2019. A total of more than 2,230 analytics sessions have been executed by the users of the VLabs, with an average of 55 working sessions per month. From M17 (February 2021) to M35 (September 2022), a total of 212 tickets have been created and managed in the Blue-Cloud Project Issue Trackers (85% have been closed). Moreover, 34 tickets related to Blue-Cloud have been created in the D4Science overall context (88% have been closed).

Source: ISTI Project report, Blue-Cloud, D4.6, 2022