This is the home of the AAF Enable AuScope Grid Portal Infrastructure space.

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AuScope Portal (AAF-enabled)

Geodesy Workflow Portal (AAF-enabled)

The challenge

Members of the Australian Geoscience community can access secure services provided by the AuScope Portal, including various data services and workflow engines. The objective is to AAF-Enable the AuScope Grid Portal and its associated services to provide an audit trail of usage and provide access rights to various resources such as computational resources provided by ARCs and various data custodians.

The solution

The AuScope Grid Portal and associated services will be accessed via the web and when users require authentication to access restricted content (either due to resource limitations or privileges), users will be required to “login” to their host organisation to progress to use the service. This will allow users within the Geosciences community to access services provided by AuScope via their home organisation’s credentials (simplify user access). Anyone with an account with one of the member host organisations will be granted access to agreed services – therefore granting quick easy access to the services with minimal effort on the user’s behalf. CSIRO’s Minerals Down Under Flagship (MDU) will adopt AuScope Grid services and portal when they are AAF-enabled for both the public and confidential client data it holds.

The work was completed to schedule in April 2010

The benefits will…..

· Provide users of AuScope services with single-sign on capability via their host organisation (IdP) to AuScope Grid hosted services, such as the AuScope portal (http://portal.auscope.org);

· Determine authorised level (based on credentials) within portal/services provided by AuScope (role based authorisation implemented by AuScope);

· The service (and its integration with AAF) will enable easier uptake in particularly the University domain;

· Students will be able to use the service by authenticating to their host university which has a prior arrangement with AuScope. This will allow university lecturers to

use the services provided by AuScope which encompass workflow engines that exploit ARCs HPC resources; use within lectures, tutorials/labs without having to sort out multiple authentication issues beforehand (ie: applying for accounts with the service provider (AuScope), ARCs partners;

· The AAF enabled AuScope services will enable easier and quicker collaboration between the geosciences community;

· Provides the – “use straight-away” mechanism.

Future opportunities

AuScope hopes to learn the technical requirements of deploying for the AAF during this project so these and future services can be “guarded” in the same manner.

AuScope Services could and are currently being extended/customized for usage in domains outside of the Geosciences – in particular to cover water, climate and fisheries data.

“The AAF will provide a easier way for members of AuScope and other communities to access to a large range of resources which before all required their own set of usernames and passwords – now with the AAF, they can be accessed by one set – you’re host organisation’s credentials – making things simpler for the user!”

Project Members

Implementation

Implementation Documentation

https://twiki.auscope.org/twiki/bin/view/Grid/AafEnableAuscopeGridServices

Implementations

AuScope Portal (AAF-enabled) - http://portal.auscope.org

Geodesy Workflow Portal (AAF-enabled) - http://portal.auscope.org/GeodesyWorkflow

AAF Mini-grant Recipient Final Activity Report