A Template for Science Web Gateways to Advanced Research Computing: The engine behind the GenAP II Portal

The Genetics and Genomics Analysis Platform (GenAP) is a computing platform for life science researchers across Canada that has been offering services integrated to Compute Canada since 2015. It has been used so far by nearly... [ view full abstract ]

The Genetics and Genomics Analysis Platform (GenAP) is a computing platform for life science researchers across Canada that has been offering services integrated to Compute Canada since 2015. It has been used so far by nearly 200 research groups and is expected to grow with the increasing demand for genomics computing. One of the main GenAP component is a portal gateway allowing users to run their own instances of genomics web applications, which are then linked to the Calcul Quebec Mammouth supercomputer. The development of the second generation of GenAP, expected in production by Spring 2018, will lead to a secure and more flexible Web Gateway that is able to easily leverage several Advanced Research Computing (ARC) resources.

This presentation will mainly focus on the core building blocks and technologies that are used to build the GenAP II Portal Gateway, which have been extracted into a fully functioning and generic Science Web Gateway (SWG) template. This template can then be used as a starting point in the development of any science platforms requiring to leverage ARC resources. The main features of this SWG template includes: 1) Direct connection to the user ACR resources accounts; 2) Management of multiple authentication and identity sources; 3) Groups and projects management; 4) General and easy implementation of ACL; 5) Files management and transfer tools; 6) Management of Web applications through push/pull events from the applications Factory (physical server hosting the application containers); 7) Spawning applications in and/or from a closed secure network; 8) Easy to add new types of web applications.

The software stack and libraries used in the development of this SWG template includes among many others, React and AntDesign on the client side (the browser), and Python3 and Flask on the server side. The template is packaged for a development environment that uses Vagrant, Ansible, and Webpack.