Indiana University (IU) was funded in September 2003 by the NSF to be part of the nine-partner TeraGrid. (TG) as a resource provider (RP). IU has already demonstrated its commitment and ability to manage such a project by integrating its resources into the TeraGrid by October 2004. This proposal outlines a five-year management and operations plan for the set of resources and services to be provided by IU to the TeraGrid. IU will commit to TeraGrid users a substantial fraction of its available resources. A total of 610,000 SUs (raw service units) will be contributed in FY2004/05 (on a mixture of current processor architectures in support of traditional supercomputing, reaching 13,484,000 SUs by FY2008/09. The University will focus on providing unique computational resources such as GRAvity PiPE (GRAPE) boards and a Condor pool to national users. Finally, they will address the growing data-centric computing needs of research users by providing easy-to-use data storage resources in the form of online storage, archival storage, databases, and data collections; with a focus on life sciences, and for new user communities. Storage goals will be 10TB (online) and 0.5PB (archival) in FY2004/05, reaching 116TB (online) and 5.6PB (archival) by FY2008/09.
As a TeraGrid Resource Provider, IU intends to deploy a strategy that invests heavily in people, contributes supplementary and distinctive resources, and leverages IU.s existing strengths in research areas such as community grids, grid portals, and science gateways. IU is experienced in and committed to a service- and data-centric approach to enabling users. The University believes that the key to the TeraGrid's widespread success is to deliver easy-to-use computing services to new communities of users who have hitherto been unable to make use of the existing NSF cyberinfrastructure. To implement IU.s RP plan, this proposal requests funds for seven dedicated full-time equivalents (detailed in the project description and budget narrative sections) and for nominal and proportional maintenance for IU's TeraGrid connectivity infrastructure. IU's TG-dedicated human resources will be used to help users port applications to TG, to enable new users with gateways and portals, to perform regional and national outreach, to manage IU's TG project and resources, and to assist the national TeraGrid effort. IU will focus specifically on bringing to the TG entirely new communities of users. As an eight-campus university in the State of Indiana, IU is deeply committed to collaboration and will develop collaborative relationships with the TG community nationally.
