CERN Site Report HEPNT/HEPiX October 1999 SLAC

Alan Silverman CERN/IT/DIS 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

E-Mail

• Central service : major overhaul of all servers, O/S upgrades, Y2K fixes, disc+memory upgrades • MSmail migration completed 4 months ahead of target • Still recommend Netscape but every new version has its share of new bugs • New Listbox service, still based on Majordomo, major cleanup, many huge lists • Spam mail an ongoing problem; averages 10K mails rejected daily with peaks 3-4 times higher 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

LDAP

• New LDAP server from the Sun/Netscape alliance was chosen. • New schema being implemented (much richer) • Meeting with IN2P3 and LAL at Lyon last week • A successful US trip - could be useful for other sites mailwww.cern.ch/documents/officials/ustrip99.html

– in particular a clear status on the Sun/Netscape alliance (which is really working in practice) – interesting presentations by Mirapoint 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

AFS

• AFS transferred to PDP Group • Buying more Intel PCs as servers and looking at using Linux as O/S, at least for scratch space • Plans for moving to Transarc Linux on PCs and AFS 3.5 everywhere – all new Linux clients use Transarc’s AFS 3.5

– first file servers moving to 3.5

– clients and database servers will stay 3.4 till at least end-year – a few problems seen with 3.5 but not serious 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Linux

• Current CD distribution based on Redhat 5.1; pressure for Redhat 6 (kernel 2.2 features wanted) • Physics usage rising rapidly - more physics groups “retreating” from NT • Linux project getting underway: start from scratch if Linux is the only UNIX being developed, would we need tools like SUE for example?

• Kickstart server in production use, >160 clients (mainly Comp Centre and LHCB exp.) 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

UNIX

• Year 2000 web pages (versions, patches, etc) //nicewww.cern.ch/~favrot/year_2000.htm

• Prelim plans to freeze all non-Linux UNIXs met considerable resistance; freeze = ??

• Discussions continue but only PCs (and some SUNs) are being bought by physicists • Installed StarOffice on Linux and Solaris; Redhat 6+AFS problem; how compatable with Msoffice? Support issues?

4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Windows Plans

• New NICE team manager (F.Hemmer) • Agreed to skip Windows 98, update Windows 95 instead and complete the NT4 offering under NICE • Windows 2000 as a NICE client soon (1-2 months?) after release; pilot working now • Windows 2000 architecture group started 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Printing

• Central printer servers, with fail-over • Based on lpr protocol, both UNIX and Windows • 1200 queues, 14K jobs per day, 7GB per day • User-friendly interfaces (Print Wizard on NICE, Xprint on UNIX, web-based Java interface also) • Almost all Springer queues now switched • Tools being put (back) in the public domain 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

PC Supply

• Managed to keep the same base configuration for 9 months and with lowering prices - is this a record • Now in market survey for new supplier, will soon issue a call for tender • Supplier relationship more important than price of any given configuration 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Outsourcing

• Desktop Contract started January 1st, based on service levels • Still a lot of learning to do on all sides but mostly on the CERN side! • Experiments have agreed to merge in over 2 years • Contract seems to be working but no performance figures to prove it yet 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Problem Report Mgmt System

• Chose Remedy, the market leader (or at least one of) • Implementation is non-trivial and we are late, no performance figures yet • With its licences, fully-configured servers with lots of disc space and consultants to help, Remedy is not a cheap solution • Plans to help experiments delayed 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Networking

• Central Data Recording using Gigabit networking for all exps, >40MB/sec • PDP/CORE servers moved to Fast Ethernet (1000 nodes) or Gigabit Ethernet (50 nodes) • First deployment of 100BaseT on desktops 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Batch Systems

• PCs, PCs, PCs. We expect +100 in the coming 4-6 weeks alone • First interactive Linux cluster coming online; will move to Redhat 6.0 and AFS 3.5 very soon • Starting a new monitoring project in order to be able to manage 100s (1000s?) of PCs • Tests of IDE discs for servers; may be too early for next purchases but interesting 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Central Data Recording

• CDR again very successful this year; major experiment was again NA48 -- 100 TB of raw data with an average of 20 MB/s (45 MB/s peak), 2400 Redwood STK tapes. Large Online/Oflline LINUX PC farm (70 PCs) • Plus CDR for 20 test beams (ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, L3C) mainly using HPSS, 3 OBJECTIVITY setups, several TB of data • Next are NA45 (30-40 MB/s), NA49 (16 MB/s) and preparations for COMPASS (35 MB/s) 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman

Tapes

• Fourth STK silo, now 32 drives including 4 for HPSS • Redwood servers now based on Linux except for the HPSS servers • CASTOR - attend Tony Cass’s progress report later in the week 4-8 th October 1999 CERN Site Report, HEPiX SLAC. A.Silverman