1. EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 Enabling Grids for E-sciencE www.eu-egee.org EGEE and gLite are registered trademarks Trouble Ticket exchange standardization Mathieu Goutelle (CNRS UREC) 2 nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN

2. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 2nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN 2 Outline Lessons learned from the ENOC experience: –What the issues & difficulties are, –Common information found in Trouble Tickets, –Possible improvements, –The necessary information that forms a Trouble Tickets; –Ticket format for exchange, Conclusion and next steps;

3. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 2nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN 3 Lessons learned from TT exchange The different languages (currently 8 different languages for the ENOC); The number of character sets (character encoding) of the information sent and the often non-conformant MIME formatted mails received; The often non-specified time zone of the dates; The variety of minor modifications in the “fixed” field (status e.g.): “open” vs. “opened”, upper/lower case, differences in date formats; The amount of free text that is unparsable (or at least very difficult to parse); The “Location” field is quite inaccurate, for instance when many paths are crossing the same geographical location/trench/duct/hut it is hard to know which services could be impacted or not. When it is noticed it is often as free text.

4. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 2nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN 4 What are the common pieces? An unique identifier that is necessary to follow the evolution of the ticket during its lifetime; The start date & time and the end date & time of the problem if applicable; The status of the ticket (e.g. opened, pending or closed); The summary of the problem (often one line of text in the email subject) A longer description (usually as free text). Plus less systematically: The type of the trouble (planned maintenance or unplanned incident). The impact of the trouble, often as free text.

5. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 2nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN 5 Possible improvements To exchange information, the two parties should agree on: –The minimum information, in an agreed format, that should be present in all tickets; –The information schema (how the information are represented); –The evolution of the status of the ticket (what the different states and possible transitions of a ticket status are). No change in the TTS already in place: only a translator between the internal and “exchange” formats is needed.

6. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 2nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN 6 Necessary information Type of the trouble:  “Scheduled maintenance”, “Unplanned incident”;  We can also imagine: “Informational”, “Supersedes”… Location of the trouble:  Unique ID (possibly fictive) to designate a piece of the infrastructure;  Possible values agreed between the parties; Impact:  “no impact”, “light performance impact”, “severe performance impact”, “no connectivity”;  Possible values agreed between the parties; Date & time when the ticket has been opened and closed:  different from the problem start and end date. Summary:  Short description, written in English;  To be selected from a small defined set of possibilities (menu list) Description:  Maybe the only “free text” field ;  only gives extra details that are not possible to include somewhere else.

7. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 2nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN 7 Ticket format for exchange Format should: –Be extensible and upgradeable; –Make use of established technologies; –Adopt standard conventions; Marked-up schema rather than plain text; No hard-coded field-names: –Key & attributes giving its description; –Allow localization of the names; Definition of the date format, the terminology, etc. Should come from adopted standards; The XML technology is a good candidate: –If there is an already existing schema, it should be used; –Initial research suggests there is no such suitable schema.

8. Enabling Grids for E-sciencE EGEE-II INFSO-RI-031688 2nd TNLC meeting – 2007-02-21, CERN 8 Conclusion Some related works exist: –Not suitable as is but some parts can be borrowed; –Should be studied in more details; NRENs should take the lead here: –Either in GÉANT2 or in EGEE; –Work to define the schema can already be carried out; –TERENA is also a place to investigate; A meeting should be organized at the next TNC conference (21-24 May, Copenhagen): –http://tnc2007.terena.org/http://tnc2007.terena.org/ –Claudio Allocchio, and RedIris people (working in the same field for CERT in GÉANT2) should be there. –I hope to have some TERENA involvement after this meeting; https://edms.cern.ch/document/788081/