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 191 - 31st October 2005
============================================
Present: Dave Britton, Stephen Burke, John Gordon, Steve Lloyd, Peter
Clarke, Jeremy Coles, Tony Doyle, Roger Jones, Dave Kelsey & Neil Geddes.
Sarah Pearce by SKYPE
Apologies: Robin Middleton, Tony Cass
1. Quarterly Reports
====================
DB said he had received all of RM's reports. These had been processed
and feedback will be given. He had not received anything from Tier-1 so
TD said he would follow this up with Andrew Sansum (ACTION). DB had
received the Tier-2 quarterly reports. Experiments were still
outstanding - RJ to follow up. DB said he still had to go through Grid
Metrics with JC. Completion date for all quarterly reports would be
Friday, 4th November.
[Note: all reports were submitted by the final deadline]
2. e-Science Clarification - Grant Rounds (additional item)
===========================================================
PC said he had concerns about the inconsistent way in which universities
buy in new equipment and felt that there should be a proper model in
place to respond to. To this end he said he would send sample
spreadsheets from HPC SIG showing how UCL and Edinburgh use a specific
format for purchasing equipment based on fEC. This has been implemented
by Jeremy Yates and has been accepted by PPARC, e-Science directors &
EPSRC.
This led to further discussion regarding depreciation costs for hardware
which SL, DB & TD are currently looking into.
3. Gridmon Nodes
================
Further to the email from Robin Tasker regarding this purchase, the board
gave final approval for this. DK to arrange purchase through RAL code.
(ACTION)
4. Documentation Officer - Report on Status
===========================================
SB said he was still working on the user documentation pages and had
sent some comments on the CA website to Jens Jensen. JG said that the
GOSC was rewriting the CA web pages with input from Alan Flavell and
others as well as SB and this should be given a chance rather than
GridPP writing their own guide to the CA. EGEE is rumoured to have a
group working on documentation SB should get involved with it as long
as it doesn't diverge from GridPP's requirements. This report will
become a standing item.
5. Closer integration with NGS/GOSC
=====================================
NG forwarded a document he had prepared along with the GOSC Board to
develop the NGS, which supported working more closely with EGEE and
GridPP. He had also had a series of meetings with Steve Pickles to
discuss various points of issue. The main point of this extract which TD
wished to support was the following statement:
"Our ultimate goal must be that as a default there is only one underlying
UK e-infrastructure for research, with different logical views of this
infrastructure from each of the user (VO view), resource provider and
operational perspectives. E.g. Departments or groups may provide
resources to GridPP, e-minerals or similar multi institutional
collaboration. These may be dedicated or shared resources. These
resources should trivially be provided by joining the NGS and supporting
the GridPP and e-Minerals "VO"s."
NG said that as we are the market leader for the Grid we had to compile a
list of what we could do. It was clear that certain areas would need
assistance and advice if they wanted to use the Grid service and that
positive support should be given. This issue will also be raised at the
next Deployment Board meeting.
AOB
===
JG reported on the organisation for GridPP15 (11th - 12th January 2006).
There was not a hotel big enough to house all those attending. The
average cost of Abingdon Hotels would not be much greater than Coseners
House would have been and would be cheaper than some previous GridPP
venues. It was likely that a bus would have to be provided to take
people from their accommodation to RAL. It was agreed that the PMB would
be held on Tuesday, 10th January from 9-1. A joint PMB/DB meeting would
be held from 2-5 with a continuation early Wednesday 9-10.30 before the
main meeting starts.
PC, DK & NG had to leave the meeting at this point.
STANDING ITEMS
==============
SI-1 ALL: to provide any news items and meeting dates for the web page to SP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SP said she was preparing an item on Tier-2s reaching 100TB of storage
space at various sites. (completed on Tuesday 1st November)
She also asked if someone could give her a statement about the EGEE
conference in Pisa and JG said he would provide this (ACTION). SP said
she would provide help for RJ to do a talk for Supercomputing if he
wished and that BP was working on a general talk at the moment.
TD had received an invite from Fermilab to visit their SC05 booth. JG
said that the UK Booth would be sending out publicity too. There was
scope for the LCG demo to target likely particle physics visitors.
DC, SP and BP are working on a 24 hour webcast with CERN on 1 December
and are arranging speakers for Imperial. A press release will be
prepared for this.
RJ said he had a meeting on Thursday regarding a TV programme about the Grid
(building on contacts already made for ATLAS).
JC said that Silicon.com would be visiting RAL to write a story and take
photographs.
SI-2 Production Manager's weekly report of issues
-------------------------------------------------
EGEE-4 was more "active" than previous conferences. These things are of
note:
It was again confirmed that releases will be on a continuous basis (tags
against components) - the releases will be re-branded soon
Monitoring of core services and metrics will be the main priority for the
next few months
VO boxes was not really discussed (questionnaires not yet completed) but
it was a background discussion (it will be taken up again at the next
GDB)
Liverpool is now live - they expect to have dCache by the end of
November. Thanks to Paul Trepka, Michael George and special appreciation
to Alessandra Forti for following through on agreements to get the site
up essentially by the end of October.
QMUL has experienced delays with SE upgrade and 2.6.0 upgrade. A
configuration problem upset other sites so the site was put in the
'uncertified' state until further notice.
The ROC security challenge is happening now - a pilot on one site
followed by a challenge against all sites.
SouthGrid (thanks to Yves Coppens & Pete Gronbech) sites all now publish
an SRM
Graeme Stewart will participate in the LCG annual review at CERN on 14th
November.
Sites are voicing more concern about the MoU requirements - London Tier-2
is planning to document what it believes it is capable of achieving
SC3 service phase is progressing - VO boxes for ALICE and ATLAS
established at RAL. ALICE not active (no allocation). ATLAS due to start
shortly. LHCb have problems with FTS functionality and CMS currently
experiencing file truncation with transfers.
SI-3 LCG Management Board Report of Issues.
To be reported next week - first meeting today.
ACTIONS
=======
184.1: TC to write document "How CERN helps the small sites to
install and manage the LCG software"
ongoing
184.2: DN and JG to report on GridPP All Hands abstracts
ongoing
184.3: RM and RJ to document Gap Analysis
ongoing
184.4: DN to document UB questionnaire issues
ongoing
187.1: JG to prepare combined actions list from GridPP14 meeting
ongoing
188.2: JG to work on improving logos for LCG/EGEE/GridPP branding
ongoing
189.2: PC to contact UKERNA to report on user policy for SKYPE via
JANET
done - PC said that Jeremy Sharpe from UKERNA said that it is fine by
Janet AUP, but was up to the individual University to decide if they
should allow you to use it. (He added that Edinburgh are fine with Skype
for now.)
Note: the PMB performed satisfactory tests during the week using Gizmo.
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
(in beta release)
It uses SIP (accepted non-proprietry protocol), doesn't have
the licence problems of Skype, and provides for up to 10 connections in
a conference call.
NEW ACTION 191.1: TD to contact AS regarding quarterly reports for Tier-1
NEW ACTION 191.2: DK to liaise with Robin Tasker regarding the purchase
of monitor machines
NEW ACTION: 191.3 JG to provide SP with a statement about the EGGE
conference in Pisa.
NEW ACTION: 191.4: JG to provide SP with information/list regarding
invitations from the UK stand at SC05
ACTIONS AS AT 31ST OCTOBER 2005
===============================
184.1: TC to write document "How CERN helps the small sites to install
and manage the LCG software"
184.2: DN and JG to report on GridPP All Hands abstracts
184.3: RM and RJ to document Gap Analysis
184.4: DN to document UB questionnaire issues
187.1: JG to prepare combined actions list from GridPP14 meeting
188.2: JG to work on improving logos for LCG/EGEE/GridPP branding
191.1: TD to contact AS regarding quarterly reports for Tier-1
191.2: DK to liaise with Robin Tasker regarding the purchase of monitor
machines
191.3: JG to provide SP with a statement about the EGGE conference in Pisa
191.4: JG to provide SP with information/list regarding invitations from
the UK stand at SC05
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