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/php/pmb/minutes.php?latest
as well as being listed with other minutes at
http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/php/pmb/minutes.php
Cheers, Tony
________________________________________________________________________
Tony Doyle, GridPP Project Leader Telephone: +44-141-330 5899
Rm 478, 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: 194.36.1.32
________________________________________________________________________
GridPP PMB Minutes 161 21st February 2005
==========================================
Present: Tony Doyle, Steve Lloyd, Dave Britton, Tony Cass, Dan Tovey,
Roger Jones (by phone), Robin Middleton, Jeremy Coles - for a short time,
Dave Kelsey & Sarah Pearce (by phone)
Apologies: John Gordon, Peter Clarke
1. Issues related to deployment raised in GridPP12 talks and DTEAM workshop.
============================================================================
(SI-2 Production Manager's weekly report of issues).
This is a follow up from the issues JC had emailed to the PMB last week.
JC commented briefly on some of these items this week but was only able to
attend the meeting for a short time. He also circulated a spreadsheet
detailing more issues, with proposed solutions and appropriate actions.
1) On the basis of site feedback it is now less likely that any UK site
will use Quattor - even the Tier-1A is unlikely to adopt it.
- Only Dublin is showing an interest.
2)Sites have not understood the importance (or urgency) of installing a
monitoring tool such as Ganglia. This is being addressed and will be
raised at the next Tier-2 board (wording in the MoUs may limit what we
can request).
- This is being restricted by the MoUs. Sites will have to address this
through the Tier-2 Board
3)Tools and procedures developed within the Tier-1 and CCLRC e-Science
areas could be very useful to Tier-2 sites and we will be exploring this
possibility.
- Tools have to be identified to pass to Tier-2s.
4) We will deploy VOMS for the GridPP VO to gain experience in VOMS.
5)There is a need for developing and sharing diagnostic tools within the
team. Some already exist. The effort will be coordinated via a dedicated
deployment web-page.
- There is no formal document at the moment. The existing method of
documentation will be used until an official document of web pages is
set up.
6) The lack of an LCG middleware architecture document has increased
problems within the deployment activities - admins do not understand how
components fit together making problem diagnosis more difficult.
7) Lack of manpower at sites is the single biggest problem affecting
deployment. The next significant problem is non-functioning Tier-2
management structures.
- The Tiers are having problems recruiting at the moment.
8) We agreed what the team saw as the scope of the Tier-2 coordinator
roles.
- JC will circulate to the PMB what the Tier-2 coordinators roles should
be based upon earlier input from TD.
9) Storage - Edinburgh has deployed dCache. We have selected one site
from each Tier-2 to take part in a wider implementation once Edinburgh
and RAL are able to provide simple installation procedures and the sites
are stable.
- TD asked what the high level plan was for including the dCache
documentation. JC replied that the deployment pages would link to Jens'
pages as this was in the best interests of Jens maintaining control as
corrections are feedback from administrators. There is no current plan
to develop a new set of documentation. TD asked about the general status
of the deployment pages and said that it would be good to have an
official release before the March meetings (next week). JC agreed that
the pages need to be available and said he would make it a priority but
that other planned work would be impacted. He also passed on a general
feeling from the DTEAM that demand for the pages from users is currently
not high.
10) TB-SUPPORT meetings which have traditionally been focused on updates
and installations will be trialed with a discussion theme.
- more discussion to educate people will be instigated at these meetings.
11) Discussions in the area of "grid vs local access" are biased and the
team strongly favour "local access" which is local only in name!
12) Interaction between the Global Grid User Support (GGUS) helpdesk and
the regional Footprints service is poor. The team have proposed another
approach (using subject field recognition to auto-forward mails) and we
will test this in the next few weeks.
- A new procedure for interfacing will be put in place by GGUS
13) Discussions identified several shortcomings in the current
monitoring and CIC-on-duty setup that will be fed back to the relevant
parties.
14) A list of site responsibilities were identified as a basis to
encourage sites to provide the required service levels that will be
expected under the LCG MoU.
15) The subject of planning and metrics occupied a lot of time on the
first two mornings. The team will now attempt to evolve the structure
via e-mail exchange before meeting in early March for a day long
planning meeting.
16) Weekly reporting from the Tier-2s will start this week. EGEE
operations meetings already require weekly regional reporting.
DK said that JC had done well in highlighting these issues and these
should be sent to the Tier-2s and the User Board.
2. European Grid Conference in Amsterdam
========================================
SP gave some feedback on the EGEE workshop. Two of the four programmed
speakers had been unable to attend. An estimated 30 people had been
present at the morning talks from NeSC and Dave Colling, but only a few
had turned up for the last session of the conference. She wanted to
extend thanks to Dave Colling and Steve Fisher who had filled in as
speakers at short notice.
3. Review of Phase 2 Planning Meeting
=====================================
See http://agenda.cern.ch/fullAgenda.php?ida=a05144
TD wished to review briefly, the LCG Phase 2 Planning Meeting he had
attended last Wednesday with RJ and JG.
TD said the RRB Committee would be meeting on April 19th but the
information on Phase 2 Planning from the UK had to be available by the end
of March. The next Phase 2 meeting would be on 17th March. TD had said we
were reviewing Tier-1 policy w.r.t. Form X input and tape capacity
planning for the Tier-1 Board. However, the Tier-1 Board does not meet
until 11th April which is too late for input as this is needed before the
end of March.
DB spoke briefly about the Tier-1 planning model and said it had been
re-written and was now easier to follow. The table described the input
from the Tier-2 Centre plus support for VOs. He has still to put in Form
X, LCG experiments, scale of hardware and bandwith.
The Board discussed support for the VOs and TD noted that not all UK sites
would support all of these. SL said all Tier-2s would support LCG
experiments but not all the institutes. TD asked if there was a policy
for each regional Tier-2 centre to indicate that the particular regional
centre would support a set of VOs.
NEW ACTION: SL to contact Regional Tier-2 centres for their policies on
resources allocated by region/per institute.
NEW ACTION: JG - what is long term plan for Grid operations.
Actions
=======
140.9 RM to finalise LCG Deployment Logbook.
ongoing - to be finalised in this week.
157.2: RJ - review experiment computing models for Tier-1 to Tier-2
interactions in the UK.
ongoing
157.4: TD to co-ordinate development of Tier-1 allocation policy.
ongoing
157.5: DB to co-ordinate development of new risk register.
ongoing - DB is waiting for risk forms to be returned from SL & RJ.
157.9: RM to report on direction of GridPP in terms of middleware.
ongoing
157.11: JG to provide info. on VAT exemption criteria.
ongoing
157.12: New Events Officer to provide standard template talk for schools.
ongoing
159.1: TC to complete LCG Risk Assessment Forms
ongoing
159.2: RM to complete Middleware Risk Assessment Forms
ongoing
159.4: JG to complete Tier-1 Risk Assessment Forms
ongoing
159.5: SL to complete Tier-2 Risk Assessment Forms
done
159.6: JC to complete Production Risk Assessment Forms
ongoing
159.7: NG to complete Interoperability Risk Assessment Forms
ongoing
159.8: DB to complete General Risk Assessment Forms
ongoing
159.9: SP to produce business cards for Dave Colling
ongoing
159.10: RM to get Jens and Andrew together to discuss SRM issues
done
159.11: RJ to make Andrew fully aware of ATLAS plans
ongoing
159.12: SL to get reports of Tier-2 internal structures.
ongoing - will be discussed at Tier-2 Board
159.13: TC to extract LCG issues from GridPP12 talks
ongoing
159.14: RM to extract Middleware issues from GridPP12 talks
ongoing
159.15: RJ to extract Applications issues from GridPP12 talks
ongoing
159.16: TD to extract Tier-1 and Tier-1A Board issues from GridPP12 talks
done - 25 issues raised
159.17: SL to extract Tier-2 issues from GridPP12 talks
done
159.18: JC to extract Deployment issues from GridPP12 talks
done
159.19: DB to make list of all GridPP people and their roles
ongoing
159.20: RJ/JC to organise a meeting to discuss integration of experiment
planning and service challenges
ongoing
159.21: RJ to draft a document on high level adoption of our work by CDF
done - a letter will be sent to CDF management in a few weeks
159.22: RM to to contact Stephen Burke on relative priority of documentation
done
159.23: TD to contact Minos to see what their requirements are
ongoing
159.24: RJ/TD to contact (other) experiments to find out priority use cases
ongoing
NEW ACTION 160.1: SL to contact Regional Tier-2 centres for their policies
on resources allocated per institute.
NEW ACTION 160.2: JG - what is long term plan for Grid operations.
Standing Items
==============
SI-1 ALL: to provide any news items and meeting dates for the web page to SP.
SP asked DT if he would be willing to be the next subject for the 'Meet
the PMB'. He said he was very busy, but if she sent him a list of
questions he would try to complete something for her for next week. SP
said she would have a press release on LCG for Mid-March relating to 100
sites, 10,000 CPUs.
SI-2 Production Manager's weekly report of issues.
This was discussed at the start of the meeting.
AOB
===
JC has requested permission to attend the International Symposium on Grid
Computing 2005 being held in Taipei. The symposium will be preceded by a
GDB LCG Service Challenge meeting.
(http://www.twgrid.org/event/isgc2005/).
This has still to be discussed by the board.
DT said that a number of members of staff were experiencing difficulties
when applying for Grid certificates which resulted in long delays. A
letter had been sent to NG to complain. It was not clear if the problem
lay with the CA or RA.
ACTIONS AS AT 21ST FEBRUARY 2005
================================
140.9 RM to finalise LCG Deployment Logbook.
157.2: RJ - review experiment computing models for Tier-1 to Tier-2
interactions in the UK.
157.4: TD to co-ordinate development of Tier-1 allocation policy.
157.5: DB to co-ordinate development of new risk register.
157.9: RM to report on direction of GridPP in terms of middleware.
157.11: JG to provide info. on VAT exemption criteria.
157.12: New Events Officer to provide standard template talk for schools.
159.1: TC to complete LCG Risk Assessment Forms
159.2: RM to complete Middleware Risk Assessment Forms
159.4: JG to complete Tier-1 Risk Assessment Forms
159.6: JC to complete Production Risk Assessment Forms
159.7: NG to complete Interoperability Risk Assessment Forms
159.8: DB to complete General Risk Assessment Forms
159.9: SP to produce business cards for Dave Colling
159.11: RJ to make Andrew fully aware of ATLAS plans
159.12: SL to get reports of Tier-2 internal structures.
159.13: TC to extract LCG issues from GridPP12 talks
159.14: RM to extract Middleware issues from GridPP12 talks
159.15: RJ to extract Applications issues from GridPP12 talks
159.19: DB to make list of all GridPP people and their roles
159.20: RJ/JC to organise a meeting to discuss integration of experiment
planning and service challenges
159.23: TD to contact Minos to see what their requirements are
159.24: RJ/TD to contact (other) experiments to find out priority use cases
160.1: SL to contact Regional Tier-2 centres for their policies on
resources allocated by region/per institute.
160.2: JG - what is long term plan for Grid operations.
STANDING ITEMS
==============
SI-1 ALL: to provide any news items and meeting dates for the web page to
SP.
SI-2 Production Manager's weekly report of issues.
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