Towards a Swiss National Research Infrastructure

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development and coordination of a Swiss National Research Infrastructure by federating local resources across autonomous academic institutions, leveraging existing projects like the Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid and Academic Compute Cloud.

Contribution

It proposes a federated model for a national research infrastructure in Switzerland, based on existing projects and testing operational setups for heterogeneous resources.

Findings

Successful federation of diverse resources across institutions

Operational setup tested with existing projects

Framework for coordinated national infrastructure established

Abstract

In this position paper we describe the current status and plans for a Swiss National Research Infrastructure. Swiss academic and research institutions are very autonomous. While being loosely coupled, they do not rely on any centralized management entities. Therefore, a coordinated national research infrastructure can only be established by federating the various resources available locally at the individual institutions. The Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid and the Swiss Academic Compute Cloud projects serve already a large number of diverse user communities. These projects also allow us to test the operational setup of such a heterogeneous federated infrastructure.