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Present: Dave Britton (Chair), Pete Clarke, Alastair Dewhurst, Tony Doyle, Pete Gronbech (minutes), Steve Lloyd, Andrew McNab, Gareth Smith, Andrew Sansum.
Apologies: Tony Cass, Jeremy Coles, David Colling, Roger Jones, Dave Kelsey,
1. Changes to PMB
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The PMB welcomed AD (GS will hand over to AD and was thanked for his contribution to the PMB). DB invited AS to stay on the PMB representing SCD and wider initiatives.
2. OSC Documents
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Discussed the various comments in the OC document.
3. Networking
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PC discussed the peering of various international Grid sites and asked if there were any technical requirements for particular peering arrangements from experiments? None were identified.
4. Researchfish
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PC will email Ian Fuller asking questions about Researchfish tomorrow.
PC, PG to work out how to complete the forms and inform PI’s.
5. AOCB
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Main thing is to converge OSC papers.
Tier-1 plan to request carrying forward 1.5FTE of staffing from FY17 to FY18 in order to complete work to enable efficiency savings, that were unable to be completed during FY17 due to low bookings.
The strategy to bring in new users was predicated on the hope that there was going to be investment from STFC for other projects and it has not happened on the timescale we hoped. Flat-cash funding within the PPAN science areas has made it very difficult. However, it may be realized through UKT0…. though slower than anticipated, and so far funding has been capital.
CASTOR consolidation will save effort in the longer term.
Will UKT0 have some resource funding and is this likely to help GridPP?
PC Always has a defocused view that something will happen in the future. If this money comes through from BEIS, we will try to capitalise some the staff for particular projects. For example, some effort might contribute to exploratory work being done on data-lakes.
6. Standing Items
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SI-0 Bi-Weekly Report from Technical Group (DC)
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Meeting cancelled, nothing to report.
SI-1 ATLAS Weekly Review and Plans (RJ)
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Nothing to report
SI-2 CMS Weekly Review and Plans (DC)
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AM: LHCb some issue affecting UK users, and some CERN users. Certificate issue.
Dcache and xroot complications.
Still trying to understand it.
SI-3 LHCb Weekly Review and Plans (PC)
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Nothing to report.
SI-4 Production Manager’s report (JC)
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JC not in attendance, no report submitted.
SI-5 Tier-1 Manager’s Report (AD)
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Here is a brief Tier1 report for today (26th Feb ’18) covering the week since the last meeting.
Castor:
– AliceDisk is getting very full. Alice informed.
– There is an outage on Castor announced for Thursday (1st March) while the database systems have Oracle patches applied.
Networking:
– Last Wednesday (21st) the IPv6 connections, both to the RAL Core network and the ‘bypass’ route were moved to share the IPv4 connections. This was done ahead of a change to enable IPv6 (dual stack) on the Echo Gateways – i.e. providing IPv6 access to Echo planned for tomorrow (Tuesday 27th Feb)
Infrastructure: (No change from last week)
– We await further updates regarding an ongoing problem with one of the BMS (Building Management Systems) in the R89 machine room. This has an intermittent fault.
– Work is still going on to install cooling such that one row of racks in the R89 machine room will have water-cooled doors. Thus opening up the possibility of higher capacity racks.
Capacity Purchasing:
– One tranche of CPU expected soon (a week or so); Concern over delivery from one vendor with a tranche of both storage and CPU. Delivery dates slipping closer to year end.
Concern about XMA equipment being delivered in time. May have to deliver without network cards. May have to go and label it in there warehousing, but would rather not have suggested that at this stage. DB urged AS to have a contingency plan in place.
SI-6 LCG Management Board Report of Issues (DB)
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PC attended the WLCG MB. He sent notes around. There is a search for a new WLCG middleware officer.
We do not think it will be a good idea for anyone from the UK to offer as it is a part time role which appears to require more effort than allocated.
SI-7 External Contexts (PC)
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PC is going to BEIS next week to defend the £16M bid.
UKT0 meeting. AS has done a good job making the agenda. There will be lots to talk about.
There is no operational infrastructure to support the UKT0 h/w.
The only infrastructure around is GridPP.
Euclid claims to have a huge requirement.
We can offer cores but we suspect they don’t have a mechanism to use them.
PC reported on Data Lakes. Was skeptical at first but now more convinced. They have emailed Paul Alexander and Anna Scafe to make them aware of the project.
Want to create a digital asset, so could use some UKT0 money. Need to wait to see if we get the money from BEIS.
Needs DB and PC to talk to Tony Medland.
REVIEW OF ACTIONS
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644.3: AS put together a starting plan for staff ramp-down. (Update: a draft will be produced in January). Done.
644.4: AS will progress capture of funds for Dirac with Mark Wilkinson. (Update: funding from DIRAC. AS has emailed Mark. They are now using it more heavily. Could use the money for tape, but have to be careful not to buy tape we won’t use. May be better charging later rather than during this FY?) Ongoing.
649.2: PC will write Wider Context of OS documents. Done.
655.3: PG to consider the agenda and date for Tier1 review and include disaster recovery plans. (UPDATE: appropriate dates are being considered with AS). Ongoing.
656.1: DK will report before the end of February on any actions GridPP should take to comply with GDPR. Ongoing.
656.2: DC will report on CPU efficiencies. Ongoing.
657.2: DC to report on the CMS taskforce. Ongoing.
ACTIONS AS OF 26.02.18
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644.4: AS will progress capture of funds for Dirac with Mark Wilkinson. (Update: funding from DIRAC. AS has emailed Mark. They are now using it more heavily. Could use the money for tape, but have to be careful not to buy tape we won’t use. May be better charging later rather than during this FY?) Ongoing.
649.2: PC will write Wider Context of OS documents. Done.
655.3: PG to consider the agenda and date for Tier1 review and include disaster recovery plans. (UPDATE: appropriate dates are being considered with AS). Ongoing.
656.1: DK will report before the end of February on any actions GridPP should take to comply with GDPR. Ongoing.
656.2: DC will report on CPU efficiencies. Ongoing.
657.2: DC to report on the CMS taskforce. Ongoing.