D4.1 Blue Cloud VRE Operation Report - Release 1

The Blue-Cloud project is developing 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 understand better and manage the many aspects of ocean sustainability. This is achieved by the Blue Cloud platform, whose architecture consists of two major families of components: (a) the Blue Cloud Data Discovery and Access service component to serve federated discovery and access to 'blue data' infrastructures, and(b) the Blue Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE) componentto provide a Blue Cloud VRE as a federation of computing platforms and analytical services.

This deliverable presents the Blue Cloud Virtual Research Environment by complementing the picture described in Assante et al. (2020b), where the constituents have been discussed. In particular, 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.

As of February 2021, 9 Blue-Cloud VLabs were created and operated. In particular, the following VLabs are specifically conceived to support the developments of the Blue-Cloud Demonstrators: (i) The Aquaculture Atlas Generation VLab is developed in the context of the Demonstrator #5 -Aquaculture monitor; (ii) The Fisheries Atlas VLab is developed in the context of the Demonstrator #4 -Fish, a matter of scales; (iii) The GRSF_Pre VLab is developed in the context of the Demonstrator #4 -Fish, a matter of scales; (iv) The Marine Environmental Indicators VLab is developed in the context of the Demonstrator #3 -Marine Environmental Indicators; and (v) The Zoo and Phytoplankton EOV VLab is developed in the context of the Demonstrator #1 -Zoo-and Phytoplankton EOV products. The following VLabs are conceived to support project activities and/or to provide their users with development and demonstrative environments: (i) The Alien and Invasive Species VLab is a demonstration oriented VLab showcasing how a web-based, comprehensive, and collaborative working environment supporting decision-makers and scientists in predicting the spread of an invasive species (possibly alien) in a new environment can be developed; (ii) The Blue-Cloud Lab VLab is developed to provide the Blue-Cloud community with a working environment to experiment with Blue-Cloud facilities; (iii) The Blue-Cloud Project VLab was devised to support Blue-Cloud project activities and discussions; and (iv) The HealthyOcean VLab was developed to support the liaison between the REV Ocean team1and the Blue-Cloud team regarding several initiatives including the Ocean Data Platform.

These working environments are serving more than 490 users in total spread across more than 20 countries.

Up to January 2021,a total of more than 10,200 working sessions have been executed by these users, with an average of 640 working sessions per month, since the start of the Blue-Cloud project in November 2019. Overall, a total of 1573 analytics tasks have been executed, with an average of 98 tasks per month. These figures are expected to grow in the second period of the project, thanks to the development and availability of VLabs stemming from the demonstrators.

During the reporting period, a total of 113 tickets (e.g., requests for support, tasks, incidents) have been created and managed in the specific area dedicated to Blue-Cloud (75% have been closed). Moreover, 44 tickets related to Blue-Cloud have been created in the D4Science overall context (79.5% have been closed).