1. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 Minimising RISC  General strategy - converge on PCs with Linux & NT to avoid wasting manpower in support teams and in collaborations and minimise hardware investment & maintenance costs  This is a proposal for time-scales for reducing RISC dependence and support  We would like feed-back during the summer, with a view to agreeing on targets at theOctober meeting

2. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 Public Services  RISC Public Services batch - rsbatch; csf interactive - rsplus; hpplus, dxplus - semi-private  new Public Linux service - batch and interactive default for new users sufficient (& increasing) capacity with the goal of attracting users rapidly away from the RISC public services and from LEP/Chorus/Nomad private services  Target: de-commission all public RISC services in 2001? (or earlier?)

3. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 SHIFT/WGS - when to freeze?  Nomad/Chorus/LEP freeze with Y2K attract users off to public Linux (see previous foil) re-do disk servers to suit RISC & Linux end 2000 target: de-commissioning of SGI & DEC during 2001 advantage for LEP collaborations: do not need to specify a hard cut-off date for LEP data analysis  NA45/NA48/ Compass well on the way to PCs  LHC no further RISC investment HP frozen freeze Sun at end 2000 target: de-commission RISC during 2001

4. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 PaRC, NAP & Euclid PaRC, NAP  Floating point intensive codes support an argument that RISC is more cost-effective  Dunix needed for Euclid until end 2003  Where possible migrate to Windows or Linux  At least: standardise on Alpha, phase out AIX  Review (& cost) now the dependency on the general support structure, CERNLIB, etc.

5. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 General Support  O/S, backup, shift, ASIS, AFS, HEPIX scripts, compilers, ….  CERNLIB and the implications for external labs  The OO environment: CLHEP, OBJY, analysis tools, ….

6. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 General Support (Desktop & Libraries) Solaris is a safety net! Proposal

7. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 Summary  Set up a big attractive public Linux service for everything except NA45-NA48-COMPASS-LHC  Ramp up support for Linux OS and environment - LINUX project physics libraries, tools and products  Pull (& push) everyone to migrate  Need a community agreement to make it work  This is a low risk proposal though failure to meet targets will lead to lost opportunity & wasted resources

8. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 Short items VMS print client Work on the VMS client for the new print service is well under way, and this should be available very soon. CLHEP & CERNLIB access rules A proposal has been made to place CERNLIB, CLHEP and the other HEP-owned parts of LHC++ on the Web, with free access to anyone willing to accept the copyright notice. This would replace the current distribution system, and the charges made to non-HEP users. This has been accepted by the management, but awaits approval by the Legal Service. Distribution policy for GEANT4 patches As agreed by the GEANT4 technical steering board, binary libraries will be distributed (in optimised mode) for the supported platforms with each release. Releases will probably occur approximately every 6 months. Patches will be distributed in source code (at critical times these could be at two week intervals). It is not feasible with the available resources to maintain binary libraries for all of the platforms for each patch distribution. It is also not really clear that this would be useful, as by their nature patches have not been fully tested and collaborations may prefer to select only patches which fix problems they have encountered. If the CERN GEANT4 users agree on one or two platforms, and a specific set of patches, additional builds between releases could be considered.

9. les.robertson@cern.chfocus 1 july 99 INTAS Proposal In the framework of the CERN-INTAS collaboration agreement, a proposal has been made for funding for grants for about 20 scientists working in computing support at institutes in the Moscow region * to ensure computing infrastructure support for the LHC experiments. This would include establishing and maintaining physics software libraries, providing expertise on tools and packages used by the LHC collaborations, participation in GEANT 4 development, optimisation of networking between CERN and the institutes. The principal aim is to keep good scientists in physics computing. There is no hardware investment. The cost would be shared equally by INTAS and CERN (about 25K Euros per year for two years from CERN). If LHC collaborations believe that it is interesting to pursue this proposal further, they should express their interest to Hans Hoffmann. ______________ * NPI MSU, ITEP, IHEP, JINR, INR, KI, LPI, MEPhI