Interoperable AI Infrastructure Access Portals Across Europe

Providing simplified access to distributed HPC, AI, and cloud resources remains a fundamental challenge for research infrastructures worldwide. Driven by major investments from national, regional, and international institutions, and user demand for streamlined access, the need for consolidated resource portals offering a single pane of glass is clear. Yet implementations that are interoperable across institutional and national boundaries remain challenging.

This session brings together operators of production federated research infrastructures to share synergies regarding concrete experiences, challenges overcome, and lessons learned. The common threads include Waldur, an open-source platform for federated resource management that has been deployed across multiple national and European infrastructures, and the GÉANT MyAccessID service that provides a common Identity Layer for Research Infrastructures across Europe and beyond.

Deployments and integrations represented include: the UK AI Research Resource AIRRPortal providing federated access to national AI supercomputers including Isambard-AI at Bristol and Dawn at Cambridge; deployments at CSCS supporting Swiss academic and commercial users; and integration patterns with the EuroHPC Federation Platform.

These diverse deployments share common challenges that will form the core discussion topics: implementing federated, trusted authentication and authorisation that works across institutional boundaries; managing resource allocation and accounting across heterogeneous systems; supporting both traditional HPC workflows and emerging AI workloads; and overall balancing local, site autonomy with federated consistency--a prerequisite for interoperability.

The session features short lightning updates from each deployment (2-3 minutes each), followed by moderated discussion where attendees are encouraged to share their own experiences, ask questions, and debate approaches. A live interactive poll will gauge current practices and pain points across the audience, helping to focus discussion on the most pressing topics.

The session is particularly timely given the growing number of national, regional, domain-specific, and European initiatives requiring federated access, including the EuroHPC AI Factories, Destination Earth, and various national AI infrastructure investments. Attendees will leave with practical insights applicable to their own federation challenges, connections to peers facing similar problems, and awareness of open-source tools available to support their efforts.

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Organizers:

• Ilja Livenson
• Sadaf Alam