Since september 2005, five Community Projects and the D-Grid Integration Project are working together in the D-Grid framework to build a sustainable Grid infrastructure in Germany. Today more than 15 Community Projects are working covering a broad range of application areas from High Energy Physics to Financial Services.

Based on this infrastructure e-science techniques shall take root in the German science. The Community Projects and the Integration Project will jointly develop the general and sustainable fundamental Grid infrastructure to become available for the entire German science in future. Emphasis is placed on developing sustainable services that will be made available both by academic and commercial service providers.

The Fraunhofer Institute SCAI is contributing to the Community Projects InGrid, ProGrid and PartnerGRID and to DGI.

The work on two sub-projects of DGI is already finished: Management of Virtual Organizations (VO) in D-Grid (VO-Management Project) as well as the integration and interoperability of VO-Management Technologies in D-grid (IVOM Project). 

Currently, SCAI participates in the DGI sub-project AAI/VO, which provides a basis for a D-Grid-wide AAI in context of the management of virtual organizations within the communities. Since midyear of 2009, SCAI furthermore participates in the new projects D-Grid Scheduler Interoperability (DGSI) and SLA4D-Grid. 

DGI - The D-Grid Integration Project

Being part of the D-Grid Initiative the D-Grid Integration Project (DGI) will create the sustainable Grid platform for e-science in Germany. The DGI acts as Grid-Service and Grid-Resource provider for the entire scientific community in Germany by integrating the developments of the Community Projects with the complementary ones of the Integration Projects. To achieve this DGI and Community Projects in close cooperation will ensure the development of a sustainable fundamental D-Grid platform for the Grid/e-Science-Infrastructure in Germany.

The following areas will furnish the resources for the sustainable operation:

• FG 1: D-Grid Fundamental Software Different Grid Middleware are maintained and provided to the scientific communities in Germany. Solutions for the management of large datasets and for the management of dynamic virtual organisations will be developed.

• FG2: Core-D-Grid Compute Resources will be integrated and operated in the Core-D-Grid. Systems for Monitoring, Accounting, User Support, etc will be developed to allow a sustainable operation of the infrastructure.

• FG3: Network and SecurityFG3 is working on integration of the existing network infrastructure into the Core-D-Grid. FG3 is also addressing general security topics.

• FG4: Project Management and Sustainability FG4 is responsible for coordination of the DGI project partners and organisation of the entire D-Grid Initiative along with the responsibility for all questions regarding the sustainability of the D-Grid platform.