1. AFS Phase Out experience R. De Maria

2. AFS and LSF Phase Out (1) I have learned about relevant changes in IT services, only while iterating with IT experts for a recurring issues with an AFS volume for the LHC@Home project. The picture formed slowly in the last year. My summary: AFS to be phased out sometimes in the following years (e.g. 2019 files will be deleted). Today there are incoming issues with newer Windows, Mac and Linux versions of the AFS client. Community and developers dying. No replacement for AFS found, alternative products proposed, up to us to test them with some support from IT. ….

3. AFS and LSF Phase Out (2) …. EOS is one alternative, but not suitable as working directory (more later). Home directories may be discontinued after AFS. Not clear the future of LXPLUS. CVMFS is a readonly filesystem for software distribution. No personal experience. LSF will be moved to HTCondor within 18 months. No personal experience so far, more news will come soon in the context of SixTrack (Laurence from IT is studying the case and offer help in porting submission scripts) ….

4. AFS and LSF Phase Out (3) …. IT assumes that you and your manager are aware about the changes and you have the time to reviewing all your use cases testing and debug IT solutions (e.g. EOS) on your application change your processes and frameworks. IT can be contacted for help For testing EOS, I have accumulated countless emails and tickets. No single source of information to understand technical and performance differences Contradicting messages passed: EOS will replace AFS, but EOS cannot be used like AFS, IT respond to use cases but use cases has to change…

5. Additional Info https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/IT/AfsPhaseout ITUM meetings. ITUM meetings LHCb seems ahead in dealing with the issues https://indico.cern.ch/event/464391/contributions/2155263/attachm ents/1282437/1905895/LHCB_usecases_20160601.pdf https://indico.cern.ch/event/464391/contributions/2155263/attachm ents/1282437/1905895/LHCB_usecases_20160601.pdf

6. Experience with EOS (1) Good: Lot of disk space (1 TB per user, 20 TB easy to get for projects) Very fast for large files (observed up to 60 MB/s) Mounted in lxplus in /eos

7. Experience with EOS (1) Bad: Hard limit on number of files e.g. 1M file per TB Very slow in creating (few per second) or updating files (proportional to the file size and not the change) EOS mounted filesystem behaves erratically (time stamps, file disappearing) and can trick many applications (e.g. SQLite, make, text editors, your scripts) Not usable as working directory or home directory, or perhaps use at your own risk. EOS can be compiled or installed in Linux, in principle, since I am trying since few months and tens of helpdesk emails without full success. No EOS in the technical network. No information about CVMFS.