Site report: CERN

Helge Meinhard (at) cern ch HEPiX fall 2005 @ SLAC

Re-organisation (01-Nov-2005)

 This time, the physics services part of IT:      GD (Grid Deployment) and GM (Grid Middleware) merge (I. Bird) Physics Services Support (J. Knobloch): Physics Database Services (now in ADC), Experiment Integration Support and ARDA (now in GD) Linux expertise and AFS section (now in ADC) joins FIO (T. Cass) Openlab section (now ADC) moves to DI Bernd Panzer moves to LCG  Jamie Shiers to lead a coordination team for development of LHC computing services across regional centres CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 2

Personnel changes

 John Ferguson (deputy department head) left IT on 30-Jun-2005  Fr édéric Hemmer to become deputy department head on 01-Nov-2005  Les Robertson acting ad interim CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 3

Fabric Infrastructure and Operations (1)

   RedHat 7.3 phased out on public services  Campaign on storage nodes far advanced New in machine room since Karlsruhe:     200 farm PCs (dual Nocona): in production 116 disk servers (> 5 TB usable each, total of 900 TB gross capacity): part in production, part under acceptance test 112 “midrange servers”: under acceptance test 32-node Infiniband-based cluster for Theory Refurbishment of machine room proceeding  LHS being populated, but power remains limited CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 4

Fabric Infrastructure and Operations (2)

   June/July: Large number of nodes given to Atlas DAQ for tests  Peak: 730 dual-CPU machines  Another stress test for Quattor: successful Castor 2 being deployed   Very close feedback loop with developers Aim is to migrate Atlas and CMS by 01/2006 Lemon monitoring: brushed up for installations outside CERN CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 5

Fabric Infrastructure and Operations (3)

 Seeing new generation tape drives  6 LTO-3 in a new STK silo  High-end STK and IBM drives  Serial console largely deployed  Still some software issues to address  Using SMART test to identify iffy disks  Batch updates al CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 6

Architecture and Data Challenges

 OpenLab at the end of first 3 y period  Continuation being clarified  Test version of SLC4 released  No deployment planned on public services  Interest for service nodes (storage)  Certification started  Data bases for physics: RAC clusters in production CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 7

Database and Engineering Services

    Sundev discontinued on 01 July 2005  Solaris no longer a physics platform at CERN  RARP switched off Software licences managed coherently LHC@home: Beam orbit simulation  CERN screen saver – being deployed to all Windows clients at CERN  BOINC – added O (100) dual processor machines with < 1 GHz PIII AIS applications migrating to Linux servers CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 8

Internet services

 Single sign-on coming  All centrally managed services at CERN  Windows terminal server popular  Good thing in terms of security  New fax service with fax -> E-mail gateway  Moving out of roaming profiles  Pilot to run xp without admin privileges  PXE-based install now default (no media) CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 9

Communication Systems

 IPX/Novell and Appletalk routing switched off CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 10

User and Document Support

 InDiCo taking over from CDS Agenda  Desktop PC procurement and sales streamlined  CERN stores getting more involved CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 11

Computer Security

 IRC and P2P applications banned  Positive effect very visible  VPN most important route of malware into CERN  Actively being discouraged  Some viruses simply faster than the antivirus update CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 12

Miscellaneous

 CERN School of Computing 04 – 17 September in St. Malo / France very successful  LCG TDR as well as Computing TDRs of LHC experiments submitted  Proposal for EGEE Phase II submitted CERN site report – Helge Meinhard 13