INDIGO-Datacloud: foundations and architectural description of a Platform as a Service oriented to scientific computing
This addresses the problem of fragmented computing resources for researchers in fields like High Energy Physics (HEP), though it appears incremental as it builds on existing PaaS concepts and technologies.
The paper tackles the challenge of providing researchers with unified access to distributed computing infrastructures for scientific computing by describing the architecture of INDIGO-Datacloud, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that facilitates seamless access to computing, data analysis, storage, and security technologies.
In this paper we describe the architecture of a Platform as a Service (PaaS) oriented to computing and data analysis. In order to clarify the choices we made, we explain the features using practical examples, applied to several known usage patterns in the area of HEP computing. The proposed architecture is devised to provide researchers with a unified view of distributed computing infrastructures, focusing in facilitating seamless access. In this respect the Platform is able to profit from the most recent developments for computing and processing large amounts of data, and to exploit current storage and preservation technologies, with the appropriate mechanisms to ensure security and privacy.