History of NDGF

Nordic Data Grid Facility traces its history back to end-2001, being intrinsically related to the NorduGrid project. NorduGrid was established in 2000 with a very small distributed testbed, and yet aimed at providing resources for mass production with experiments at CERN. The first yearly report of the NorduGrid project indicated need for a larger Nordic facility, with storage resources being of high priority. This served as a basis for the pilot Nordic Data Grid Facility proposal, which was approved in March 2002.

The pilot NDGF infrastructure was operational in 2002-2005, and provided distributed storage in addition to the NorduGrid computing resources. It was present in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with both storage hardware and dedicated personnel. During this phase, NDGF committed to support ALICE activities in Nordic countries, and, most importantly, to provide a Nordic Tier1 for WLCG. Specifics of this Tier1 are such that it has to be an internationally distributed Facility. Though this was perceived as a very challenging task, Nordic Grid experts demonstrated the possibility of a distributed Tier1 by contributing substantially to ATLAS Data Challenges via NorduGrid since 2002, and by taking part in the LCG Service Challenges in 2005 via joint effort of Swegrid and DCSC. Success of these efforts laid the basis for the next phase of NDGF as a long-term facility, providing computing and data storage services not just to HEP community, but to all the Nordic researchers.

The Nordic Data Grid Facility in its present function as a provider of the Nordic Grid Infrastructure was established in April 2006 by the Nordic Research Councils, after thorough analysis of the pilot NDGF project, requirements of the Nordic e-Science communities, and needs of the NorduGrid collaboration. It came into operation on June 1, 2006, and its initial priority is to live up to the original commitment of establishing the Nordic Tier1, with the traditional focus on storage facilities. A large team of developers is meant to assist in Grid middleware development, complementing NorduGrid efforts.

NDGF vs NorduGrid Many confuse NDGF and NorduGrid - which is not surprising, especially since in its second phase NDGF was proposed to assume the name "NorduGrid". It was however decided to distinguish between the mostly development-oriented project, NorduGrid, and the mostly operations-oriented one, NDGF. As a rule of thumb, NDGF provides mostly services, while NorduGrid provides mostly ARC middleware.