What is a Virtual Organization (VO)?
A VO is a collaborative organization that is focused around a particular domain science and usually uses significant resources (computers, storage, networks, etc.) beyond collaboration tools. Often, these additional resources have substantial authorization requirements, stemming from federal guidelines, audit standards, etc.
A Virtual Organization (VO) is basically a group of people that are authorized to run Grid jobs on a set of Grid resources. For example, a research project members can join in a VO, so that they can negotiate access to Grid resources, policies etc. Typically, a VO has a manager which maintains the list of members and contacts resource owners whenever a negotiation is needed, for example, if a new user has a certificate issued by a new CA, or CA public keys have changed. VO managers are normally in charge of negotiating resources available for the VO members. Each site on the Grid can subscribe to different VO’s allowing all their members to run grid jobs on the corresponding site. NorduGrid maintains a VO for users affiliated with Nordic academic institutions (VO name is nordugrid.org). Few VOs are set up for the purposes of testing and demonstrations. Many other VOs are authorized on the ARC-enabled resources, but they are managed outside the scope of the NorduGrid. You can always cre
