1. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report1 Oxford University Particle Physics Site Report Pete Gronbech Systems Manager and South Grid Technical Co-ordinator

2. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report2 Physics Department Computing Services l Physics department restructuring. Reduced staff involved in system management by one. Still trying to fill another post. l E-Mail hubs n A lot of work done to simplify the system and reduce manpower requirements. Haven’t had much effort available for anti-spam. Increased use of the Exchange Servers. l Windows Terminal Servers n Still a popular service. More use of remote access to user’s own desktops (XP only) l Web / Database n A lot of work around supporting administration and teaching. l Exchange Servers n Increased size of information store disks from 73-300GB. One major problem with failure of a disk but was solved by reloading overnight. l Windows Front End server – WINFE n Access to windows file system via SCP, SFTP or web browser n Access to exchange server (web and outlook) n Access to address lists (LDAP) for email, telephone n VPN service

3. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report3 Windows Status l Systems are now almost entirely Windows XP or 2000 on clients and Windows Server 2003 for services. l More machines brought into centrally managed domain. l More automation of updates, vulnerability scans etc. l More laptops to support Grant yearWindows Desktops Installed Minimum Spec Maximum Spec Laptops (individual) Laptops (pool) 98/9925P2/350P3/450 99/0034P3/450P3/65012 00/0122P3/733P3/86632 01/0278P3/1000P4/180053 02/0349P4/2.0P4/2.66+82 03/0450P4/2.6P4/3.092 04/0545P4/3.0P4/3.2113

4. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report4 Software Licensing l Cost increasing each year l Have continued NAG deal (libraries only) l New deal for Intel compilers run through OSC group l Also deals for Labview, Mathematica, Maple, IDL l System management tools, software for imaging, backup, anti-spyware etc. l (MS OS’s and Office covered by Campus select agreement)

5. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report5 Network l Gigabit connection to campus operational since July 2005. Several technical problems with the link delayed this by over half a year. l Gigabit firewall installed. Purchased commercial unit to minimise manpower required for development and maintenance. Juniper ISG 1000 running netscreen. l Firewall also supports NAT and VPN services which is allowing us to consolidate and simplify the network services. l Moving to the firewall NAT has solved a number of problems we were having previously, including unreliability of videoconferencing connections. l Physics-wide wireless network. Installed in DWB public rooms, Martin Wood and Theory. Will install same in AOPP. New firewall provides routing and security for this network.

6. Network Access Campus Backbone Router Super Janet 4 2.4Gb/s with Super Janet 4 OUCS Firewall depts Physics Firewall Physics Backbone Router 1Gb/s 10Gb/s 1Gb/s 10Gb/s Backbone Edge Router depts 100Mb/s 1Gb/s depts 100Mb/s Backbone Edge Router 10Gb/s

7. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report7 Network Security l Constantly under threat from vulnerability scans, worms and viruses. We are attacking the problem in several ways n Boundary Firewall’s ( but these don’t solve the problem entirely as people bring infections in on laptops.) – new firewall n Keeping operating systems patched and properly configured - new windows update server n Antivirus on all systems – More use of Sophos but some problems n Spyware detection – anti-spyware software running on all centrally managed systems n Segmentation of the network into trusted and un-trusted sections – new firewall l Strategy n Centrally manage as many machines as possible to ensure they are uptodate and secure – most windows machines moved into domain n Use Network Address Translation (NAT) service to separate centrally managed and `un-trusted` systems into different networks – new firewall plus new Virtual LANs n Continue to lock-down systems by invoking network policies. The client firewall in Windows XP –SP2 is very useful for excluding network based attacks – centralised client firewall policies

8. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report8 Particle Physics Linux l Aim to provide general purpose Linux based system for code development and testing and other Linux based applications. l New Unix Admin (Rosario Esposito) has joined us, so we now have more effort to put into improving this system. l New main server installed (ppslgen) running Scientific Linux (SL3) l File server upgraded to SL3 and 6TB disk array added. l Two dual processor worker nodes reclaimed from Atlas Barrel assembly and connected as SL3 worker nodes. l RH7.3 worker nodes being migrated to SL3 l ppslgen and worker nodes form a mosix cluster which we hope will provide a more scalable interactive service. These also support conventional batch queues. l Some performance problems with gnome and SL3 from exceed. Evaluating alternative (NX) for exceed which doesn’t exhibit this problem (also has better integrated ssl).

9. 11th Oct 20059 6TB ppslgen pplxwn06 pplxwn07 pplxwn08 pplxwn09 pplxwn10 pplxwn11 pplxwn05 pplxgen pplxwn01 pplxwn02 pplxwn03 pplxwn04 pplx2 pplx3 pplxfs1 2 * 2.8GHz P4 1 * 2.4GHz P4 2 * 2.4GHz P4 8 * 700MHz P3 Scientific Linux 3 PP Linux Batch Farm Red Hat 7.3 2 * 2.4GHz P4 2 * 2.2GHz P4 2 * 450MHz P3 2 * 800MHz P3 Migration to Scientific Linux 4TB 1.1TB 2 * 1GHz P3 File Server Addition of New 6TB SATA RAID Array

10. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report10 Southgrid Member Institutions l Oxford l RAL PPD l Cambridge l Birmingham l Bristol l HP-Bristol l Warwick

11. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report11 Stability, Throughput and Involvement l Pete Gronbech has taken on the role of technical coordinator for South Grid tier-2 centre. l The last Quarter has been a good stable period for SouthGrid l Addition of Bristol PP l All sites upgraded to LCG-2_6_0 l Large involvement in Biomed DC

12. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report12 Status at RAL PPD l SL3 cluster on 2.6.0 l CPUs: 11 2.4 GHz, 33 2.8GHz n 100% Dedicated to LCG l 0.7 TB Storage n 100% Dedicated to LCG l Configured 6.4TB of IDE RAID disks for use by dcache l 5 systems to be used for preprodution testbed

13. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report13 Status at Cambridge l Currently LCG 2.6.0 on SL3 l CPUs: 42 2.8GHz (Extra Nodes only 2/10 any good) n 100% Dedicated to LCG l 2 TB Storage (have 3 but only 2 available) n 100% Dedicated to LCG l Condor Batch System l Lack of Condor support from LCG teams

14. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report14 Status at Birmingham l Currently SL3 with LCG- 2_6_0 l CPUs: 24 2.0GHz Xenon (+48 local nodes which could in principle be used but…) n 100% LCG l 1.8TB Classic se n 100% LCG. l Babar Farm moving to SL3 and Bristol integrated but not yet on LCG

15. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report15 Status at Oxford l Currently LCG 2.6.0 on SL304 l All 74 cpus’s running since ~June 20th l CPUs: 80 2.8 GHz n 100% LCG l 1.5 TB Storage – second 1.5TB will be brought on line as DPM or dcache. n 100% LCG. l Heavy use by Biomed during their DC l Plan to give local users access

16. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report16 Biomed Data Challenge, Supported a non LHC EGEE VO For about 4 weeks. LHCb ATLAS Start of August 2005 ZEUS Oxford Tier 2 GridPP Cluster Summer 2005

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22. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report22 Oxford Computer Room l Modern processors take a lot of power and generate a lot of heat. l We’ve had many problems with air conditioning units and a power trip. l Need new, properly designed and constructed computer room to deal with increasing requirements. l Local work on the design and the Design Office has checked the cooling and air flow. l Plan is to use two of the old target rooms on level 1, one for physics one for the new Oxford Supercomputer (800 nodes). l Requirements call for power and cooling between of 0.5 and 1MW l SRIF funding has been secured but this now means its all in the hands of the University’s estates. Now unlikely to be ready before next summer.

23. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report23 Centre of the Racks Rows of racks arranged to form hot and cold aisles. Flow simulation showing temperature of air.

24. Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report24 “Oxford Physics Level 1 Computer Room” Last Year you saw the space we could use. There are now 5 racks of computers located here. Tier 2 Rack 2, Clarendon, Oxford grid development, and Ex RAL CDF IBM 8 way Bad News: No Air Conditioning Room also used as a store Conversion of Room is taking time…But SRIF Funding secured to build joint room for Physics and OSC

25. 11th Oct 2005Hepix SLAC - Oxford Site Report25 Future l Intrusion detection system for increased network security l Complete migration of desktops to XP-SP2 and MS Office 2003. l Improve support for laptops – still more difficult to manage than desktops. l Once migration of central service to SL is complete, we will be developing a Linux desktop clone. l Investigating how best to integrate Mac OS X with existing infrastructure. l Scale up ppslgen in line with demand. Money has been set aside for more worker nodes and a further 12+ TB of storage. l More worker nodes for the tier-2 service l Look to use university services where appropriate. Perhaps the new supercomputer ?