The Abdelmalek Essaadi University Grid initiative UAEGrid

FST of Tangier working on a local Grid Computing

An end of study project about grid computing had been developed by a group of three students, Y. El Arichi, Y. Karroum and H. Manssouri, from the Departement Génie Informatique (FST de Tanger – FSTT), and was submitted in June 2007.
This work, titled, “Implementing and simulating a grid computing at the FSTT” was conducted by Dr. Chaker El Amrani from FSTT (UAE) and Dr. Othmane Bouhali from IIHE (ULB), and had dealt with the following items:

1. Installing a local grid, composed of a number of machines: UI, PX, RB, BDII, MON, SE, CE, WN01 and WN02, and managed by gLite middleware.
2. Designing and developing in J2EE a basic Web portal providing users an easier access to the grid data and applications.
3. Simulating the local grid resources with SimGrid toolkit.

This local grid will be connected shortly to the National platform, MaGrid.
The issue behind this initiative is to meet the recommendation made at the first EumedGrid Workshop, held in Marrakech on the 4th December 2006, which aimed at encouraging all Moroccan Universities to be involved in the grid computing activities, to install a local cluster at each University and to link it to MaGrid through MARWAN network.

UAE/FST Laboratory of Radiation & Nuclear Systems has participated in the EGSAP-1

In April 2007, the 1st EUMEDGRID School on Application Porting, EGSAP-1, was hosted in Cairo (Egypt). The EGSAP-1 aimed at creating the necessary knowledge for the porting of new applications to the EUMedGrid Pilot Testbed. To fulfil this goal, the EGSAP-1 program, based on both lectures and hands-on practices, covered in-depth the main topics of grid technology, as well as the EGEE/EUMedGrid middleware technicalities.

UAEgrid group shows up significant outcomes at the ICTIS'07

In the framwork of ICTIS'07, O. Bouhali, C. El Amrani and R. Merrouch, highlighted the fruitful collaboration gathering their three institutions, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Université Abdelmalek Essaadi (UAE) and Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (CNRST), in terms of investigation in the Grid Computing technology. The emphasis was on the MaGrid platform, a computer cluster connected to EumedGrid. It was implemented in the fall of 2006 and is currently operational. The main role of the Moroccan grid is to provide especially researchers from Moroccan Universities, an adequate platform for running computational and data intensive applications. The following is the abstract of the paper presented at this scientific symposium:
"The Grid has witnessed rapid growth in the past few years. Several countries have adopted this technology as a basic computing infrastructure for scientific and research disciplines. 
We present a report on Grid activities in Morocco in the last three years as a consequence of an established collaboration between our three institutions.
A national grid initiative, called MaGrid, has been setup which aims at deploying a robust, flexible and sustainable Grid infrastructure. This initiative proved to be a catalyst for other Moroccan universities and research centers in the country with a growing interest to collaborate in Grid activities. Moreover the involvement of Morocco in the EumedGrid project, in the Mediterranean region, will open new collaboration efforts in terms of the Grid."


UAE participe au premier Workshop EUMEDGRID

Le projet EumedGrid [Empowering eScience across the Mediterranean] vise à implémenter dans les pays méditerranéens une infrastructure de Grille de Calcul pour la recherche scientifique.
L’objectif d’EumedGrid est aussi d’encourager les chercheurs travaillant dans la région méditerranéenne à utiliser la Grille de Calcul et à profiter de la puissance de ce nouvel outil informatique, dans l’objectif de contribuer dans le développement des secteurs scientifiques et industriels de la région.
Dans le cadre de ce projet, le premier Workshop EumedGrid a été organisé à Marrakech (Faculté des Sciences, Université Cadi Ayad) le 4 Décembre 2006. Il a été suivi, du 5 au 7 Décembre d’un Tutorial pour utilisateurs et administrateurs de la Grille de Calcul.
Plusieurs pays ont été représentés à cet événement, notamment l’Algérie, la Tunisie, la Jordanie, la Syrie, l’Italie, la Belgique et le Maroc. Le CNRST a réussi une  excellente organisation au point que la responsable des activités d’EumedGrid a qualifié ce Workshop de Marrakech  d’« an example to follow » ... suite