Transcript Site report: CERN Helge.Meinhard (at) cern.ch HEPiX/HEPNT spring 2004 Edinburgh Structure, management   As of 01 January 2004: DG (Aymar), CSO (Engelen), CFO (Naudi), 7 Departments IT.

Site report: CERN
Helge.Meinhard (at) cern.ch
HEPiX/HEPNT spring 2004
Edinburgh
Structure, management
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As of 01 January 2004: DG (Aymar), CSO
(Engelen), CFO (Naudi), 7 Departments
IT Division has become IT Department
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Head: W. von Rüden, deputy: J. Ferguson
All of previous IT Division
Major part of AS Division: 3 groups working on AIS
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2 groups merged (R. Martens)
1 group merged with DB group
Printshop, document support from ETT Division
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Merged with user support (M. Draper)
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Computer Security
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AFS password expiration in force
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12 months, like other services (e.g. NICE)
Insecure protocols (e.g. ftp) banned for offsite traffic
Biggest challenge are viruses and worms
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Visitor / unmanaged PCs, dual-boot systems
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Fabric Infrastructure and Operations (1)
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Quattor / Lemon deployment
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LEAF
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Moving ahead, major benefits
 German Cancio’s talk
Lemon status display, combined metrics  Miroslaw Siket’s talk
State Management System taking shape, being integrated with
other tools
System administration
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2nd level of 3-level support model
Team now 7 people
In full swing, all major clusters under their responsibility
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Fabric Infrastructure and Operations (2)
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CC refurbishment ongoing
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Civil engineering work for bunker for new 18 kV
substation completed
Right-hand side of large machine room ready
Emptying left-hand side has begun, to be completed
by July
Disk and tape servers: re-installed with standard
configuration
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More details:  Tim Smith’s talk
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Fabric Infrastructure and Operations (3)
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Procurements
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Serial consoles
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Tenders open for white boxes (presumably…) and SATA-based disk
servers
Preparing tenders for disk arrays for autumn
Documents for Market Survey for purchases in 2006…2008 drafted
All hardware procured (LSZH cables - major amount of work)
Decision to use SLAC software, collaboration with Chuck
First machines wired up, first users relying on service
Stress tests for new and repaired machines
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Following implementation at SLAC
Now part of standard procedure
Handled by Sysadmin team
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Architecture and Data Challenges (1)
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CERN Openlab
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Workshops on total cost of ownership, and on
security held
Oracle joined as full partner, Voltaire joined as a
contributor
Detailed studies
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Fast interconnects
Disk server performance: Choice of RAID, file
system, ...
 Jan Iven’s talk
Storage performance measurements at Caspur
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Architecture and Data Challenges (2)
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Linux certification: CEL3 nearing completion
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CERN recompile of RHEL 3 sources
Aim to provide lxplus/lxbatch like service by end May 2004
CERN 7.3 will be supported until end 2004
 Jarek Polok’s talk
Considering (and testing) RHEL  Panel and discussion
Data challenges of CMS and Alice completed, Atlas and
LHCb started
New stager, Storage Resource Manager  Olof
Bärring’s talk
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Data Bases (1)
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To date: too much depends on good will and
good luck
Vision: Taking advantage of reorganisation
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Re-evaluate services
Streamline architectures, configurations, processes
Simplify management, maintenance and troubleshooting
Improve security, test regularly
SLAs (realistic, measurable) and quality control
Required for scalability in the future
HEPiX Edinburgh: CERN site report
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Data Bases (2)
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Openlab work: 2 Oracle-funded fellows
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Evaluation of Oracle 10g Database
Application Server and Enterprise Manager
Features to evaluate:
Cross-platform transportable table spaces
 Stand-by data bases
 Replications/streams
 Native numbers
 EZ install
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Data Bases (3)
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LCG services – data challenges
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CMS DC04 (April/May 2004)
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Smooth running on Physics Sun Cluster after close
collaboration with users
First full-scale production usage of LCG file catalog (RLS):
performance problem of middleware, IT-GD working
Other data challenges starting, continuing to stress
the Physics Sun cluster and the RLS
Future: investigate Oracle Streams for LCG file
catalog replication, deploy stand-by DB and
(later) Oracle application server and DB clusters
HEPiX Edinburgh: CERN site report
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Data Bases (4)
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POOL: Persistency framework for LHC
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Use Root I/O to stream data to files
Successfully deployed during CMS DC04, Atlas and LHCb to test in
their DCs
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Alice keeps using Root directly
Workarounds implemented to cope with RLS middleware performance
limitations
New Oracle contract
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Based on named users
Platform and location independent
More Application Server licences
Maintenance costs reduced and fixed for 9 years
Extended to all CERN staff + users (includes remote usage for CERN
related work)
Distribution has been prepared (support concerns)
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Grid Deployment
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LCG status  Oliver Keeble’s talk
LCG user registration, VO management 
Maria Dimou’s talk
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Internet Services
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Mail migration (to Exchange servers) completed
– 14000 users migrated
Windows terminal servers adopted as a service,
227 users during first months
Access to CERN DFS via WebDAV adopted as
a service
Windows screen saver for production fieldproven, deployment imminent
Fighting effects of Sasser worm
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Product Support (1)
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Contract for distributed computing support
retendered
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Won by SERCo
Being prepared to be in full operation by 1st July 2004
CVS services
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Two flavours, one with repositories on AFS (more failsafe), one with local repositories – 4 machines each
Major projects migrated to this service (e.g. Atlas
offline)
 Manuel Guijarro’s talk
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Product support (2)
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Solaris
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Ximian connector
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Status and plans  Manuel Guijarro’s talk
Source code released by Novell
Direct MAPI access, including advanced features
such as shared calendaring
PS evaluating deployment on Linux and Solaris using
Evolution as mail client
Busy preparing CHEP…
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User and Document Services
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InDiCo: Web application for organising
conferences  Mick Draper’s talk
Major changes to Computing Helpdesk as
a consequence of retendered Distributed
Computing Support contract
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More people at centralised (building 513)
helpdesk, less local support
HEPiX Edinburgh: CERN site report
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Communication Systems
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Internet Land Speed record: 6.25 Gb/s between
Los Angeles and Geneva
Smooth migration to new GSM operator
(Sunrise)
Portable registration enforced
ACB (Automatic call-back) shutdown:
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01-Jul-2004: Call-in only
31-Dec-2004: End of service
Recommended replacement: ISPs on open market
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