Report from FOCUS

1
Report from FOCUS

• The new mandate
• The issues dealt with in 2002
• Perspectives for future

2
A new mandate for FOCUS (Forum On Computing
Users and Services)

• Last revised 1st November 2001 Paul Jeffreys,
  Marco Cattaneo
• Background
• FOCUSs mandate is changed following the
  formation of the LHC Computing Grid Project
  Structure.
• Working assumptions made to determine the revised
  mandate
• FOCUSs main role is to look at the
  implementation, defining, running, and ultimately
  phasing out of services.
• As previously, it is primarily concerned with IT
  services run on the CERN site.
• COCOTIME maintains control over resources.
• HEPCCC retains responsibility for providing a
  forum in which the Directors responsible for
  Computing at the major European Institutes are
  able to discuss the organisation, co-ordination
  and optimisation of computing in terms both of
  money and personnel.

3
The Terms of Reference

• FOCUS will normally meet four times a year as a
  forum for bringing together CERN IT providers and
  users to define and oversee- the commissioning,
  operation, prioritisation and decommissioning of
  services the services concerned are primarily
  those on the CERN site
• it facilitates the agreement of clear definitions
  of service requirement and provision, and
  monitors quality of delivery
• FOCUS concentrates on generic IT activities which
  have wider relevance than the LHC experiments
  alone, relate to non-LHC experiments, or
  disseminate developments from the LHC experiments
  to other areas
• FOCUS reports to the Research Sector Management,
  and in particular to the Director for Technology
  Transfer and Scientific Computing
• FOCUS plans and operates across a medium range
  timescale, typically two years
• its mandate will be reconsidered at the end of
  2002

4
Activity in 2002

• Issues considered
• Decisions
• Preparation for them
• Proposals and discussions
• Information exchange
• Reports on ongoing IT activities
• Updates on status and needs of running
  experiments
• Matters arising etc.
• Way of working
• Draft Agendas prepared at beginning of the year,
  modify according to the suggestions from IT and
  users
• Users somewhat too quiet
• Review of membership in progress

5
March Agenda (1)

• 1410 FOCUS matters
• Welcome of new Chairperson and secretary
  (H.Hoffmann) 5'Chairpersons remarks
  (L.Perini) 5Review of membership
  (H.Hoffmann) 10'Agendas for 2002
  (J.Boucrot) 10
• 1440 COCOTIME matters
• Budget situation (W.von Rüden) 10Allocations
  for 2002 (H.Meinhard) 15
• 1510 New plan for end of RISC services T.Smith
  10
• 1530 Tape services issues (TMS, Redwoods, high
  speed tape drives) (H.Renshall) 10'
• Discussion foreseen for each bullet in every
  Agenda

6
March Agenda (2)

• 1610 LEP long-term data storage and access
• Experiments requirements (M.Maggi/Aleph)
  10'Possible solutions (H.Renshall) 10
• 1640 Linux Service Review (see action 22/4)
• Experiments feedback (Fons Rademakers) 15IT
  Division plans (B.Panzer-Steindel) 15'
• 1720 Updates on ongoing IT activities
• Security report (see action 21/5.1)
  (D.Heagerty) 10Plans for Objectivity/DB
  (J.Shiers) 10
• 1740 Actions outstanding

7
June Agenda (1)

• 1415 Reports from running experiments plans
  for 2002 data-taking
• COMPASS (B. Gobbo) 10
• NA 48 (C. Biino) 10
• NA 49 (A. Sandoval) 10
• 1500 Windows 2000 update
• Presentation (F. Hemmer) 10
• 1520 Plans for external access beyond ACB (VPN
  etc.)
• Presentation (F. Hemmer, D. Heagerty) 10'

8
June Agenda (2)

• 1600 Software Development Support and
  Application software
• Development infrastructure (CVS, compilers,
  tools) ( A. Pfeiffer) 10
• Libraries and toolkits Aida, Anaphe (A.
  Pfeiffer) 15
• Simulation (GEANT 4) (J. Apostolakis)
  15
• 1700 Updates on ongoing IT activities
• Update on Objectivity (J. Shiers)
  5
• Linux 7.2 (J. Iven)
  10
• CASTOR charging algorithm (H. Renshall)
  10
• Legacy UNIX (W. Von Rueden)
  5
• 1745 Actions outstanding

9
September Agenda (1)

• 1415 Update on ongoing IT activities (W. Von
  Rueden) 40
• 1515 Data Import/Export via Network (H.
  Renshall) 20
• 1610 Migration of COMPASS/HARP out of
  Objectivity (J. Shiers) 15
• 1625 Reports from running experiments
  experience from 2002 data-taking
• NA 48 (F. Marchetto) 10'HARP (A. Grant) 10'
• 1655 Computing plans of the EP division
  (I.Videau) 5

10

• PENDING ACTIONS FROM LAST MEETINGS
• PENDING ACTIONS

11
Snapshot on specific issues

• Linux (slides from Iven)
• Objectivity (slides from Shiers)
• Mass Storage (slides from Renshall)
• Discontinuation of services (Smith, Von Rueden)
• Security (slides from various presentations)
• Just some significant examples extracted from
  FOCUS presentations, many points as interesting
  as these ones are left out

12
LINUX Timeline Ivens June Slides

• last FOCUS presentation 28.03.02 estimated date
  for certification 29.04.02
• Blocking products that were late
• CERNLIB 30.04.02
• ANAPHE 02.05.02
• OpenAFS 13.05.02
• ASIS-RPM 13.05.02
• CERN RedHat Linux 7.2.1 certified on 13.05.02

13
After the certification

• Post-mortem discussion on 24.05.02
• General certification issues
• too late vs. too often
• compiler decisions etc..
• Suggestions
• more formal approach, steering body for Linux
  certifications (neither CLUG nor FOCUS)
• clearly defined environments, explicit
  dependencies, environment responsibles
• Standardize on tools like RPM

14
Linux update (1) Von Ruden September slides..

• CLUG held on September 13th
• Recommendation certify 7.3 until November, leave
  Red Hat 8.0 alone, look at 8.1 later
• Discussing CLUG future
• Form a certification team
• Advice Linux team on technical choices, define
  priorities for releases and help organising the
  certification process
• Invitation to user communities sent out early
  September to nominate a member empowered to speak
  on their behalf
• Feedback positive, first names received
• Kick-off meeting proposed for 1st half of October

15
Linux update (2)

• Version 6.1.1
• Currently still running on 2200 machines
• Main reason Objectivity (and inertia, still
  officially supported...)
• CMS no Objectivity needed for production in 3Q03
• HARP, COMPASS plan to move off Objectivity in
  1Q03
• Red Hat 6.x will become unsupported by RedHat
  towards end of year (security problems)
• We propose to freeze 6.1.1. now, except for
  security updates and to stop it in May 2003 (some
  pockets with good justification may go on a bit
  longer).

16
Linux update (3)

• Version 7.2.1
• certified in May, currently 1000 machines
• Only a few large-scale migrations so far (despite
  pressure during certification)
• LXPLUS migrating to 7.x within 2 months (will be
  delayed by 7.3.1 certification)
• LXBATCH migrating within 6 months (pending
  Objectivity and experiments needs)
• LHCb, CMS code not yet fully tested, may delay
  until after 7.3.1 certification
• ALICE 6.1.1 code runs on 7.2
• ATLAS waiting for next code release (6 weeks) ,
  but no problems expected
• COMPASS code runs on 7.2, partly migrated
  desktops, but need Objectivity for data...
• 7.2.1 is default version for Desktop Machines

17
OBjY Shiers June slides

• LHC Experiments
• LCG PF (POOL) underway first release September
• Non-LHC
• Concerns primarily HARP COMPASS
• Also CHORUS but manpower questions on both
  sides
• Detailed technical documents being prepared
• LCG PF timescale incompatible with needs of the
  above
• Nevertheless, strong motivation to stay as
  closely aligned as possible
• These plans are still under discussion

18
POOL Timetable

• September 2002 first prototype hybrid data store
  capable of providing event data persistency in a
  production setting, and supporting also non-event
  data persistency. This will be a release for
  deployment and testing by developers and experts
• Mid-2003 more functional and robust version of
  the persistency framework. Properly documented
  and packaged for general use by the experiments
• Early 2005 Completion of the fully functional
  persistency framework

19
HARP

• 2002 is last year of data taking total 30TB
• Simple access patterns mainly raw data
• Persistentlt-gtTransient converters implemented
  (DATE)
• Need for conditions DB
• Propose Oracle implementation vs current
  Objectivity/DB version same (abstract) interface
• Expressed requirement for DB solution
• Navigation, transactions, metadata
• Propose conversion of Objy data to Oracle 9i R2
• 9iR1 bugs fixed significant performance
  improvements
• HARP / NOMAD data models demonstrated with 9i
• Running on standard Intel / Linux systems
• IT-DB contact Andrea Valassi (Dirk Geppert)

20
COMPASS

• Data taking now 2004 (and beyond??)
• LHC-style volumes data rates
• Few persistent classes lt10
• Propose hand-coded converters
• As for HARP, but streaming to files in DATE
  format
• No need for or advantage from more general
  solution
• DB layer for meta-data event lookup
• Conditions DB as for HARP
• i.e. Oracle implementation of agreed abstract
  interfaces
• IT-DB contact Marcin Nowak

21
COMPASS (September)

• COMPASS will have collected over 300TB of data by
  end of 2002 run
• Approximately ½ the size of BaBar database
• This has to be migrated
• From old tape media to new
• From legacy ODBMS format to new
• 300TB _at_ 10MB / s 365 days
• Such major migrations are likely to reoccur in
  the future
• At very least from one medium to another

22
COMPASS / HARP / LCG

• High-level many similarities
• Hybrid solutions combining Database layer with
  object streaming
• Metadata applications e.g. conditions DB
• Actual storage mechanism transparent to
  applications and may well change with time!
• LCG converters (will be) generic
• COMPASS / HARP already have hand-written
  converters from DATE format
• HARP streamed objects in DB
• COMPASS streamed objects in files

23
Objy - Reminder

• Licenses are perpetual
• Use only on officially supported platforms
• http//wwwinfo.cern.ch/db/objectivity/servicestool
  s/versionsplatforms.html

24
TMS (1 of 2) March Renshalls Slides

• Managed storage implies end users no longer own
  or manipulate tapes (though we are in a
  transition phase as regards efficient
  co-location)
• CASTOR includes its own volume manager already
  containing much of the functionality of TMS.
• The CERN Tape Management System will not be used
  by the LHC experiments
• TMS (and its companion SYSREQ server) run on
  three very old SUN servers. It would be a
  non-negligible cost (hardware and software) to
  migrate them.
• We propose to shut down TMS at the end of 2002
  providing restricted functionality alternatives
  for experiments still using it.

25
TMS (2 of 2)

• To stop TMS we believe we need to enhance support
  in CASTOR for
• tape location in libraries. Only library names
• supported and query is privileged.
• write-locking volumes. Currently a privileged
  operation.
• tag (comment) field per volume. Needs to be
  added.
• CASTOR command line interfaces to the above exist
  but we could simulate sysreq tms calls if
  really required. Which experiments would need
  this ? Largest non-CASTOR user is probably NA48.
  Already using CASTOR for reconstruction and
  analysis - could they switch for raw data this
  year ?
• NA49 Sony tapes would be entered into the CASTOR
  volume manager.
• We would keep a frozen flat file extract of the
  final TMS database
• After 2002 Opal will be the only production user
  of FATMEN and will provide the effort (via
  S.Oneale) to make it TMS independent

26
Redwoods (2 of 2)

• We propose to stop all Redwood usage by end 2002
  with a contingency up to end April 2003.
• We propose to copy remaining NA48 Redwoods to the
  new higher density STK drive when available (we
  would have to borrow drives from LCG until we get
  our own). We have 150 KCHF for this - about 50
  KCHF short so will recuperate later (by CASTOR
  repack).
• We propose to reduce to 4 maintained drives from
  now and reactivate 4 drives to help in the NA48
  Redwood copying.
• We will prepare a costed plan to upgrade existing
  drives to the higher density model including
  reusing existing media at higher density through
  the planned CASTOR repack functionality.
• We propose to block access to Redwoods already
  copied to CASTOR when experiments agree but as
  soon as possible.

27
Proposal for charging algorithm (1 of 2)

• At the November Focus we proposed to charge for
  tape usage
• Proposal for charging algorithm in 2002
• Take into account
• Amount of data on tape
• Only non-deleted data is billed
• Drive compression factor is taken into account
• Tape I/O activity number of Gbytes transferred
  to and from tape
• Tape device time (to favor fast or lightly loaded
  disk servers)
• Gigabyte cost in 2002 2 CHF uncompressed (i.e.
  on disk occupancy)
• We want to modify this to rather charge for the
  number of mounts and the number of Gbytes
  transferred where the normalisation is that a
  mount/demount cycle has the same cost as
  transferring 1GB since both take about 2 minutes
  of real time.
• We suggest (this is a political decision) to set
  the costs to recuperate the media cost of user
  tapes data - about 60 KCHF/year (currently single
  copy only). In practise this is spread among
  about 15 experiments to pay from 1 to 5
  KCHF/year.
• CHARGING PROPOSAL DROPPED AFTER FOCUS DISCUSSION

28
Accelerated Schedule for RISC decommissioning
(T.Smith in March)

• AIX
• HPSS 3 2002/04/30
• Fatmen/HEPDB 1 2002/04/30
• DUX
• shiftDELPHI 18 2002/07/24
• shiftALEPH 1 2002/07/24
• shiftNOMAD 2 2002/06/30 - 2002/12/31
• DXPLUS 5 2002/07/24 - 2002/08/31
• shiftSLAP 14 2002/12/31
• HP
• HPPLUS 3 2002/07/24 - 2002/08/31
• SGI
• shiftOPAL 2 2002/07/24
• shiftL3 1 2002/07/24 - 2002/12/31
• shiftDELPHI 1 2002/07/24

29
RISC Reduction (Von Rueden in September)
2000
2001
2002
2003
30
Security (Von Rueden in September)

• Closure of off-site telnet access to CERN
• Proposed date for closure is before Easter 2003
• Date needs to be coordinated with user
  communities
• Closure of off-site ftp access to CERN
• When non clear-text replacement services are
  available
• Passwords and sensitive data encrypted
• As soon as feasible for the application services
• Registration of systems requiring off-site
  applications on high numbered ports
• Initially ssh, others added as tools improve
• Additional security checks for systems requesting
  access in the firewall
• Initially web servers, others as tools improve

31
VPN (Hemmer in June)

• Virtual Private Network
• Is a technology that can be used to access any
  resource that has been restricted to the CERN
  Intranet when you are using a computer outside
  CERN

Using an ISP
Using an ISP thru a VPN
32
Pilot VPN Proposal

• Establish a VPN pilot service
• Based on same technology than ACB
• Restricted to managed computers on CERN Linux
  machines and NICE 2000
• Requirements
• A NICE username with a secure password
• An explicit registration
• Pilot success criteria's
• User needs satisfied
• Scalability
• Reasonable security checks can be implemented

33
End of NICE 95/NT (Hemmer in June)

• Freeze NICE 95/NT by end of 2001
• Still installable by floppy
• No new applications, functionality, etc
• Stop (central) support by mid 2002
• No answers from helpdesk
• Solution to problems upgrade to W2K
• Still installable by floppy
• Ensure servers are running until end of 2002
• NICE 95/NT environment still working
• NICE 95/NT for new PCs ?
• Unlikely new PCs will be able to run Windows 95
• We still have a stock of Windows 95 capable PCs

Desktop Forum Plan seems acceptable by all
divisions except LHC
34
FOCUS-centric view
HEPCCC
ACCU?
Report upwards Receive advice
EP Forum
FOCUS
Desktop Forum
Cross- secretaries
Swap agenda items
LCG
Report to Focus
Cocotime
35
FOCUS Future

• The LCG cloud is expanding
• The number of users who interact with Computing
  Services via FOCUS only is contracting
• Which mandate for FOCUS in order to be as useful
  in LHC/LCG times as it was in the past, and has
  been also in 2002?
• This last question is the conclusion of my talk

36
FOCUS Membership (old)

• Experimental Representatives
• Jaques Boucrot ALEPH/OPERA
• Marco Cattaneo (sec) LHCb
• Maria Kienzle L3
• Begigno Gobbo COMPASS
• Ryszard Gokieli DELPHI
• Alan Grant NOMAD/HARP
• Paul Jeffreys (chair)
• Vincenzo Innocente CMS
• Livio Mapelli ATLAS
• Norman McCubbin ATLAS
• Helge Meinhard CHORUS
• Alan Norton NA48
• Stephen ONeale OPAL
• Martti Pimia CMS
• Florence Ranjard ALEPH
• Karel Safarik ALICE
• Andres Sandoval NA49
• Pierre Vande Vyvre ALICE

• Directors
• Hans Falk Hoffmann
• Jurgen May
• Roger Cashmore-attendance
• IT Representatives
• Jaques Altabar
• Pal Anderssen
• Manuel Delfino
• Frederic Hemmer
• David Jacobs
• Juergen Knobloch
• Miguel Marquina
• Les Robertson
• Jamie Shiers
• Alan Silverman (Desk Top Forum)
• Wolfgang Von Ruden
• IT Members with Experimental Contact
• no more in