Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB)

General Information

Transnational Access to Research Infrastructures is one of the activities that make up the Integrated Infrastructure Initiative Strongly Interacting Matter ("Hadron Physics I3").  The activity is financed by the European Commission within the 6th Framework Programme for Research & Development.  The Hadron Physics I3 involves 120 European Institutions including all relevant European hadron physics facilities.  The initiative is coordinated by Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (LNF) of Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy.

The objective of Transnational Access is to provide researchers from EU and Associated Countries with EU-supported access to major research infrastructures in Europe. 

ZIB at I3HP

The accessible facility at ZIB is a StorageTek mass data storage system.  Mass storage capacity is offered to computational and experimental research groups.  The typical usage scenario is "transnational data sharing", i.e. that a date repository is filled with data from computer simulations or experiments and that the data is analysed by researchers who are not working at the place where the data was generated.  The data storage system is accessed via internet.

Access can be given in the period from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2008. Transnational Access to ZIB is particularly interesting for the Computational Hadron Physics community because our system is fully integrated into Lattice DataGrid actitities (ILDG,LDG). In addition it is possible to store raw data that does not comply with Lattice DataGrid standards.

Who can apply ?

The only eligible reasearch teams for the data storage system at ZIB are those that conduct their research activity in the EU member states or states associated to the 6th Framework Programme (these are three EU candidate countries: Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Israel, Norway, and Switzerland). 

The research teams must be entitled to dissimate or arrange dissimination of the knowledge under the project carried out at the infrastructure.  Exceptions may be made for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

How to apply ?

Eligible researchers wishing to have access to the data storage at ZIB will be required to submit a witten proposal describing the work that they whish to carry out and all information requested in the Application Form (Word / PDF). Applications should be sent preferably in electronic form to:


 Dr. Hinnerk Stüben
 Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB)

Takustrasse 7	Phone: +49-30-84185-214
D-14195 Berlin-Dahlem	Fax:   +49-30-84185-311
Germany	Email: stuebenzib.de

Presentations and Publications

• H. Stüben, Introduction to ILDG, the Latfor Datagrid, and I3HP Transnational Access, Talk at Lattice Practices 06, Zeuthen, Germany, 27-28 November 2006 (conference slides)
• H. Stüben and S. Wollny, Using the Mass Storage System at ZIB within I3HP, Talk given at the Workshop on Computational Hadron Physics, Nicosia, Cyprus, 14-17 September 2005 (conference slides), published in Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl). 153 (2006) 300
  (http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-lat/0512008)
• H. Stüben and S. Wollny, Transnational Access to Mass Storage Capacity for Computational QCD, Poster presented at Lattice 2005, Dublin, Ireland, 25-30 July 2005 (poster), published in PoS (LAT2005) 109
  (http://pos.sissa.it/archive/conferences/020/109/LAT2005_109.pdf)
• H. Stüben, Mass storage capacity for computational hadron physics, Talk given at the Hadron Physics I3 Topical Workshop, St. Andrews, UK, 30 August 1 September 2004 (conference slides), published in I.J.D. MacGregor and R. Kaiser (eds.), Hadron Physics, Taylor & Francis, 2006, p. 439

Call for proposals, deadlines, and evaluation procedure

Proposals and applications can be submitted at any time until 31 December 2007.

Applications are reviewed in a smilar fashion as contributions to scientific journals.  The User Selection Panel will review applications when they arrive.  The Panel might decide to have an application externally reviewed.

Financial support

Because the data storage system at ZIB is access via internet there is no need for researchers to visit ZIB.  Accordingly financial support is not foreseen.

Structure and services of the research infrastructure

The main hardware component of the mass storage system at ZIB are two StorageTek PowderHorn 9310 data silos.  Attached to the silos are 14 tape drives model T9940B.  The net capacity available for this Activity is 20 TByte (1 TByte = 10^12 Byte).  For data security reasons, the system always stores two copies of each file.  These copies are located on two different tapes.

In the framework of this Activity the storage system can be accessed via a dedicated server.  The data management software employed is dCache which uses standard Grid access mechanisms.  The user interface to up- and download data is a set of simple command-line tools called Ltools. The speed of the ZIB's internet connection is 155 Mbit/s.

It is envisiged that the maximal amount of data that one project stores is at the order of 1-2 TByte and that the project duration is between months and the whole duration of the Activity.  Researchers interested in using the system offered are encouraged to discuss their plans with the project manager.