Dear All,
Please find attached the weekly GridPP Project Management
Board Meeting minutes. The latest minutes can be found each week in:
http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/pmb/minutes/this-week.txt
(as well as being listed with other minutes e.g. 021021.txt).
Cheers, Tony
________________________________________________________________________
Tony Doyle, GridPP Project Leader Telephone: +44-141-330 5899
Rm 482, Kelvin Building Telefax: +44-141-330 5881
Dept of Physics and Astronomy EMail: [log in to unmask]
University of Glasgow Web: http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~doyle
G12 8QQ, UK Video - IP: 194.36.1.234
________________________________________________________________________
GridPP PMB Meeting 53 - 21st October 2002
===========================================
Present: Tony Doyle, Steve Lloyd, Nick Brook, Robin Barlow.
Apologies: John Gordon, Pete Clarke, Robin Middleton, Dave Britton.
An agenda was prepared for today's meeting as follows:
1. EB Report and issues arising (NB)
2. Framework VI (TD, on behalf of RM)
3. Long-term planning (SL)
4. AOCB
5. Actions list
1. EB Report and issues arising
===============================
see http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/eb/021000/minutes.doc
NB reported on last week's GridPP EB meeting and stated that Babar had
used last year's allocation and had agreed to a further ~£20-30k purchase
of disk for immediate requirements. There will be a meeting with the
Hardware Assessment Group in November to be arranged by Andrew Sansum.
Tenders to the EU Journal have been announced.
Hardware Spend
--------------
The original plan for ~750k in FY2002 had been reduced by PPARC to 400k,
which translated to 250k on actual hardware. It was generally agreed that
EB expectations for future hardware funding should be based on actual
requirements from HAG2. RB stated that the Babar common fund rebate would
not be granted at the currently anticipated level of funding in FY2002. NB
said that all money available would not be enough to meet BaBar and LHC
requirements. TD noted that we had ~50-50 funding for LHC and Babar
allocated this FY. It was recognised that due to MoU committments the
question of BaBar needs would have to be addressed swiftly.
A plan would be needed which enabled HAG2 to access funds early in FY2003.
NEW ACTION 53.1 RB to generate financial requirements for Babar.
NB said there would be two seminars on 6th & 7th November to discuss the
LCG approach and the Aligning ROOT approach. RB agreed to give his name
to the Babar website. EB web authors were fixed as:
ATLAS - Roger Jones
BaBar - Roger Barlow
CDF - Stefan Stonjek (TBC)
CMS - Dave Newbold
D0 - Iain Bertram
LHCb - Nick Brook
UKQCD - Andrew Jackson
NEW ACTION 53.2 : NB to contact Andrew McNab to enable access to top-level
applications pages by EB web authors.
NB then discussed Tier 1/A methods and said it was agreed that they wished
to work with standard ("out of the box") RedHat 7.2 versions at RAL,
although it was clear that specific modifications were being added at CERN
and elsewhere (e.g. compilers, perl, python).
Network monitoring: It was hoped a PPARC student could help on WP7
monitoring for e.g. CMS requirements. TD stated that another student
(Caitriana Nicholson) was working with Will Bell on SAM network
monitoring.
NB said that DB would be updating the quarterly reporting sheets to make
it easier for them to report on their report against specific areas on the
project map.
2. Framework VI
===============
TD introduced the RM draft discussion document.
TD discussed the issues of supported posts for (prioritised list):
1. Tier 1/A,
2. Tier 2, and
3. middleware development.
To focus discussion, the PMB was asked to consider a model scenario
where the EU funded 4 posts in each of these areas (against a total
requirement of ~16,~16,~20).
TD noted that the total:
Tier-1 requirement is ~16 FTEs.
Tier-2 capacity is expected to be equivalent to the Tier-1 by Sept. 2004.
number of middleware developers depends on the definition but is currently
~20 (5 EU-funded through DataGrid).
After PMB agreement this prioritisation would be passed to CB.
He also discussed the mechanisms for participation in EGEE. Of the three
options for principal partner presented in the RM draft document, it was
thought that (prioritised list):
1. CLRC
2. PPARC
3. GridPP consortium
led approach would provide the clearest mechanism for reporting to the EU.
It is felt important that the EU sees the UK PP bid as a single entity,
co-ordinated by a well-established partner. This drove the rationale for
the 3 options above. We also recognise it is important that the whole of
the UK PP community is engaged in these activities and centres of
excellence are distributed within the UK, to this end the PMB recommends
option 1. CLRC has a well-established mechanism (e.g. joint lectureships)
of funding positions within the Universities. This has given rise to
very successful collaborations in the past.
For the PPARC option the PMB were concerned about the experiences with EDG
where positions were only funded at CLRC. This coupled with similar
difficulties in establishing mechanisms for placing people at Universities
in the DataTAG project lead us to disfavour the PPARC option.
The third option of forming a GridPP consortium is also fraught with
difficulties. The experience with other, smaller scale particle physics EU
funded project suggest such an approach is problematic. In particular, the
overhead of dealing with the bureaucracy and stringent requirements of the
EU seems large. Again the PMB disfavour this approach.
The PMB agreed to make this recommendation to the CB.
RB asked how the combinations of 4 posts would be split in other funding
scenarios. TD was unsure at this stage as to how different scenarios of
funding could be approached. SL noted that the PMB should not be
involved in EGEE without formal CB approval.
3. Long-term Planning
=====================
SL said he had produced this document in case a proposal is required for
PPARC. The document mainly consists of a series of headings at the moment
and he asked if anything further was required. CB would also be given
these headings but without the detail. It was agreed that further detail
in experiments would be required and RB suggested discussing this further
at the PMB meeting in November. A risk document would also be required.
It was hoped that all input could be completed by mid November 14th?
NEW ACTION 53.3 ALL to provide input to long-term planning document by
November PMB meeting.
4. AOCB
=======
TD said he had been contacted by Radio 4 looking for sounds from a World
Tonight programme about Grids. He had offered the sound of PP accelerators
(from the ATLAS movie) but if anyone had any other suggestions could they
contact him.
TD also said an invitation had been received to the
Seventh World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics,
Orlando, Florida, from July 27-30, 2003 (SCI2003) and that he and DB
were going to to do something on project management for this,
under the heading "software tools for managing people and projects".
Review of Actions
-----------------
Standing Items
==============
SL noted that no news had been posted for Babar. RB hoped to rectify this
shortly.
ACTION 35.4 : TD to contact sites which do not yet have a "green dot".
- ongoing
ACTION 37.3 : JG to review deputy job description.
- ongoing
ACTION 40.36: DB check and pull together risk assessments.
- ongoing
ACTION 48.2 : JG to find lecturers for the tutorials.
- ongoing
ACTION 52.1 : TD to send Web access log to Daron.
- done
ACTION 52.2 : DB to link high level goals from Project Map.
- ongoing
ACTION 52.3 : DB and JG to clarify VAT position.
- ongoing, as part of wider discussion on hardware funding
ACTION 52.4 TD and SL to draft a long-term planning document.
- done
ACTION 52.5 : RM to write Framework VI briefing paper for SL and TD.
- done
ACTION 52.6 : JG to announce final dates of next Collaboration Meeting.
The date was FIXED as:
6th GridPP Collaboration Meeting, Coseners House, 30-31 January 2003
(as currently announced on web pages).
JG will anounce via e-mail once registration procedure is in place.
- ongoing
ACTION 52.7 : TD to help Barbara get a GridPP certificate.
- ongoing - just started on this (setting up local unix account)
ACTIONS AS AT 21st OCTOBER 2002
===============================
Standing Items
==============
SI-1 : ALL : Continual review/improvement/update of the GridPP website.
SI-2 : ALL : to provide any new items to SL (who will pass on to PPARC).
SI-3 : ALL : supply SL/TD with meeting dates for the web page.
SI-4 : EB & TB to improve their areas of the web.
ACTION 35.4 : TD to contact sites which do not yet have a "green dot".
ACTION 37.3 : JG to review deputy job description.
ACTION 40.36: DB check and pull together risk assessments.
ACTION 48.2 : JG to find lecturers for the tutorials.
ACTION 52.2 : DB to link high level goals from Project Map.
ACTION 52.3 : DB and JG to clarify VAT position.
ACTION 52.6 : JG to announce final dates of next Collaboration Meeting.
ACTION 52.7 : TD to help Barbara get a GridPP certificate.
ACTION 53.1 : RB to generate financial requirements for Babar.
ACTION 53.2 : NB to contact Andrew McNab to enable access to top-level
applications pages by EB web authors.
ACTION 53.3 : ALL to provide input to long-term planning document by
November PMB meeting.
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