D. Britton Collaboration Board Meeting David Britton 16/Jul/07

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 Timeline 25 October 2006:Last CB meeting Finalised the reduction scenarios and answers to other questions. 8 November 2006:Final presentation to PPRP 29 November 2006:Approval of (parts of) GridPP2+ 15 March 2007: Approval of GridPP2+ and GridPP3 (Roughly the “70% scenario”). Assessed outcome and issues. 28 March 2007:Rescheduled Oversight Committee Re-costed staff and hardware; updated schedule and requirements. Examined middleware transition; Identified gaps for funding. 15 June 2007:Final financial plan to STFC

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 GridPP3 Approval Proposal 70% scenario 16,710 11,820 8,410 7,290 4,500 3,100 1,890 1,660 1,170 1, , ,140 25,840

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 Oversight Committee 2. Plans for GridPP3 The OC encouraged that we look flexibly at identified cost savings in GridPP2 that might be used in GridPP3 (subject to PPARC approval). They also encouraged us to identify the small number of things that can be done well (in the context of the overall plan proposed by Dave at the meeting). 3. Credibility Gap The OC recognised the potential derailment of the overall project due to lack of funding at the applications interfaces. A report was requested on where we are in terms of closing that credibility gap. (The background was of anticipated decreasing overall application efficiency due to poor implementations of the computing models).

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 Final GridPP3 Planning 1. Hardware re-costed in light of most recent purchases 2. Requirements updated in light of LHC schedule

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 Final GridPP3 Planning 3. GridPP2 expenditure and commitments examined: Balance of £1.2m arose from: a)Funding of Tier-2 coordinators by EGEE-II. b)Loss of staff at RAL due to GridPP2+ uncertainty. c)Cumulative cost savings against the SLA due to slow hires and cheaper than planned average staff costs. d)Slippage of hardware requirements due to delays in the LHC schedule

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 Final GridPP3 Planning The final plan submitted to STFC (circulated last week to CB) consists, essentially, of everything explicitly approved by the PPRP (done at the post level) plus a plan on how to spend the £1.2m saved from GridPP2. The latter was divided into three areas: 1)Posts that were described in the original GridPP3 proposal but not costed in the JeS forms because the relevant institute was unknown: Admin Assistant and UB Chair. 2)Posts that were identified as essential in order to enable an orderly transition in the middleware area from the present 27 FTE (including EGEE) to something like 8 FTE approved for the duration of GridPP3. 3)Posts (identified by the LHC Experiments) to address the lack of application support in both the Rolling Grant and the GridPP funding rounds.

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 New Post Costing

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 GridPP3 Summary

D. Britton25/Oct/2006GridPP3 Current Situation  The GridPP(2+ and 3) funding is established.  The plan for the commitment of these funds is accepted by STFC.  BUT, there is currently uncertainty on whether all the funds from GridPP2 can be carried forward.  The situation is expected to be clarified very soon ~ 1 week  BUT, there are posts that are supposed to start in less than 7 weeks which are not yet confirmed (the new middleware transition posts)  AND, no grants have yet been issued pending the finalisation of the plan so many institutions are justifiably uncomfortable.