Deployment of an e-Infrastructure for Academic Research

One of the greatest problems researchers in Africa face, according a 2007 UNESCO report is a chronic lack of investment in facilities for research and teaching. This has both affected the quality and quantity of research output from institutions of higher learning, with the ripple effect of stagnating industrialization and R&D processes. This paper presents the design and implementation of an e-infrastructure, which is made up of cloud and grid computing clusters domiciled in University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN). The project has objectives, such as to deploy an Identity Provider (IdP) based on Simple Access Markup Language (SAML) that uses robot certificates to authenticate users on the cloud and grid infrastructures, deploy a Web 2.0 based Science Gateway application server that enables researchers have access to simulation, and modeling applications in their research domains on the infrastructure. As well as implement a Virtualized cluster for big data analytics. Results from one of the applications developed and deployed on the infrastructure show over 60 % predication accuracy while participation database in the infrastructure has reached up to 350 users.