HEPiX Orsay 27 th April 2001 Alan Silverman HEPiX Large Cluster SIG Report Alan Silverman 27 th April 2001 HEPiX 2001, Orsay

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 2 HEPiX Orsay Overview of the talk Goals of the SIG First Contacts Activities Cluster Builder Workshop

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 3 HEPiX Orsay What could a SIG do? Promote appropriate sessions at future HEPiX meetings; perhaps even special meetings These sessions Cluster Workshop (see later) Monitoring mini-workshop Make sure each site knows what relevent work is in progress (produce some form of list of work in progress?) Site visits (see below)

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 4 HEPiX Orsay Be aware and promote collaboration, share parts of projects perhaps Software certification - how to share the load? Dcache project at DESY CERN central Printer Scheme Be open to the possibility of people exchanges JLab person at CERN now (for 2 weeks) A CERN Associateship is in negotiation for a colleague

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 5 HEPiX Orsay Site Contacts Around HEPiX in JLab, I visited and spoke to people not only JLab but also Fermilab and BNL Since then I have visited RAL and IN2P3 In at least these sites there should now be a greater awareness of work done at other sites Andy Kowalski of JLab visited CERN on his way home from DESY so keeping CERN aware of the joint DESY/JLab dCache project Mini-workshop on Monitoring planned for May

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 6 HEPiX Orsay The First Activities - 1 Certification of future versions of Linux and Solaris – establish a table of tasks and benefit from being second; get early warning of problems; avoid pure duplication. The outline of the table is under review by CERN and FNAL experts; merge mailing lists? Make available CERN’s printing package and possibly share future support of it Agreement reached between CERN and JLab and Bryan Hess of JLab at CERN this week learning the package

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 7 HEPiX Orsay The First Activities - 2 CLASP and Kerberos 5; benefit from FNAL’s practical experiences and CERN’s detailed analysis. FNAL is implementing a Kerberos pilot; CERN has decided it is not the correct moment for this – long term doubts about AFS and possible disturbance to the Windows 2000 service now being prepared for rollout UNIX/NT password coordination (JLab’s jpassword utility): common password, common password rules Users appear not to consider this high priority

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 8 HEPiX Orsay Cluster Builders Workshop - 1 A workshop to write the definitive guide to building and running a cluster - how to choose/select/test the hardware; software installation and upgrade tools; performance mgmt, logging, accounting, alarms, security, etc, etc Then document what exists and what might scale to large clusters. And by implication, what does not scale Maintain this.

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 9 HEPiX Orsay Cluster Builders Workshop - 2 May 22 nd to 25 th in Fermilab Participation targetted at sites with minimum size ( node) clusters Invitations sent, not only to HEP sites but other sciences, including biophysics. Also inviting participation by representatives from commercial firms with technical backgrounds Program and more information on the web

27 th April 2001Alan Silverman 10 HEPiX Orsay AFS or OpenAFS ? Future IBM support of AFS is unclear Reliance on OpenAFS is not popular with lab Mgmt, at least until proven Many sites using OpenAFS SLAC - VA Linux “assisted” with AFS support DESY - HEP should combine to support OpenAFS Proposal - all HEP sites combine and appoint someone to negotiate withVA Linux on supporting OpenAFS. Needs someone to follow this through.