D6.1: Interim report on the PRACE Operational Services

The objective of this deliverable is to present the activity done in the reporting period (May 2019 - July 2020) to operate and coordinate the common PRACE Operational Services, foreseen by Task 6.1 of WP6 within the PRACE-6IP project. The operation of the PRACE distributed HPC infrastructure involves the coordination of a set of services which integrate the Tier-0 systems and a number of national Tier-1 systems in a “single” pan-European HPC infrastructure.
This work is the continuation of the work done by Task 6.1 in the previous PRACE-IP projects to provide continuity to the PRACE Operational Services for the HPC ecosystem.
Eight Tier-0 systems in five countries were operational in the first year of the PRACE-6IP project period.
Furthermore, operational support has been provided to twenty national Tier-1 systems that provide services for Tier-0 (i.e. used from SMEs for the SHAPE activity, or as stepping stone towards Tier-0 systems, or to prototype and asses new Operational Services). These Tier-1 systems are distributed among fifteen different countries, ensuring a wide distribution of the European HPC ecosystem and serving the DECI calls.
A new version of the PRACE Service Catalogue, which describes the PRACE common services, has been created and approved by the PRACE BoD to further guide the operational activity. The PRACE Service Catalogue represents a living document reflecting also the requirement to develop new user-friendly services in the context of PRACE.
Based on the procedures for incident and change management, the complete set of PRACE common services as defined in the PRACE Service Catalogue (Networking, Data, Compute, AAA and Security, User, Monitoring and Generic) have been operated and monitored on a day-by-day basis to assure continuity and integrity of the services.
The Security Forum, responsible for all security related activities, is also coordinated by Task 6.1. This is achieved with periodic teleconferences to monitor the infrastructure and prevent possible incidents which could cause vulnerabilities on the PRACE RI.