Building a Data Grid for the Australian Nanostructural Analysis Network

This paper describes the architecture and services developed by the GRANI project for the Australian nanostructural analysis network organisation (NANO). The aim of GRANI was to provide the NANO community with a scalable, distributed data management solution and a secure collaborative environment to ensure high speed access to and seamless sharing of their data, instruments, analytical services and expertise. A grid-enabled, distributed system was developed that links the major Australian microscopy instruments to an underlying distributed national imagery database, a network of microscopy experts, and image processing and analytical services through an authenticated Web/Grid Portal. The aspects that are particularly innovative and that will be described in depth include: (1) the nano image database (NIDB) - an indexed, distributed archive of images captured directly from the advanced instruments and copied to the National Data Facility using GridFTP; (2) access to APAC's high performance computing (HPC) facilities and grid environment for high speed file movement, image analysis and 3D reconstruction; and (3) real-time video conferencing and video annotation services to improve support for remote access to advanced microscopy instruments and experts.