Production Quality e-Science Grid

This paper reports on the progress made to date with the establishment of the National Grid Service, the core of which is based on the nodes recently acquired from funding allocated by the JCSR and CCLRC. Following the analysis of users’ initial requirements, the UK e-Science Grid was set up through the collaborative efforts of the four involved sites and the HPC(x) and CSAR services using the support of, and experience gained by, the Engineering Task Force and the White Rose Grid. The paper outlines the hardware and software configuration, including grid middleware, of compute and data clusters that offer a production quality grid service for use by UK academia. Furthermore our experience of selecting products for a usable and stable service is reported. Finally, it highlights some issues related to convergence interoperability with other grids, and in particular with EGEE.