Distributed Computing Services on top of a Research and Education Network: GARR
Abstract
Since the beginning of 2013 the Italian National Research and Education Network GARR has
started a new Distributed Computing and Storage Department (DCSD). The new DCSD in the
Italian NREN, follows the new mission of GARR that will not only provide very advanced
Network services to the Research community, but also manage, consolidate and expand an
Italian Distributed Computing and Storage Infrastructure based on Grid and Cloud.
This paper provides state of the art information on the planning and deployment of such
infrastructure presenting the motivations, the objectives and the vision that will bring this
infrastructure into the next Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission. The first
pillar of this strategic evolution of GARR is the new project "GARR-X Progress" which has
been recently approved by the Italian Ministry of Research and Education and that aims to
deploy an advanced e-Infrastructure in the south of Italy (Regions of Convergence). GARR-X
Progress will use a new fibre optics backbone and deploy a new distributed system of 6.000
Virtual CPUs and more than 6 PB of storage.