SRM2.2 deployment workshop - bulletin 3

Just thought I would give a quick update as to the organisation of the workshop. First of all, thanks to those who have already registered - we are fast approaching our limit and the registration page will be closed soon (so apply now if you still would like to come).

http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/827/

Secondly, I have changed the format of the Indico agenda page to use the "conference" format. Hopefully this makes more sense since we are having a couple of parallel sessions during the workshop which was difficult to see from the default layout.

Thirdly, I am working with people at NeSC to try and setup a hands on session where delegates get a chance to "play" with the SRM2.2 configuration on a dCache or DPM. At the moment there are still some technical "challenges" to overcome. I'll keep you posted.

As always, get in touch if there are any questions.

PS Can anyone name the tartan?

SRM2.2 deployment workshop - bulletin 2

The registration page for the workshop is now available.

http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/827/

Could everyone who has pre-registered their interest to me please complete the registration form. If you require accommodation you should select the relevant nights and this will be booked for you by NeSC (they will not be paying for it though!). I have a list of names of those who have pre-registered, so I'll be chasing up anyone who does not fill out the form.

The agenda can be found here:

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=21405

If you have any SRM or storage issues that you would like raised at the workshop, please let me know and I will try to ensure that it is covered at some stage.

Looking forward to seeing you in Edinburgh!

OSG storage group

I was in a meeting yesterday with the OSG data storage and management group. I had realised that there was some activity going on in the US regarding this, but didn't know just how many people are involved, or what precisely they were doing. Turns out that there is actually quite a few FTEs looking at dCache 1.8 testing, client tools, deployment scripts, bug reports and support. There is clearly quite an overlap with what we try to do in GridPP, although there are a couple of differences:

1. GridPP has only me (and part of Jens) dedicated to storage. The rest comes from the community of site admins that have signed up to the mailing list. This works well, but it would be good if there were others who could dedicate more time to looking at storage issues. There were previously a couple of positions at RAL for this stuff. Hopefully there will be again in GridPP3.

2. Unlike GridPP, OSG is not dedicated to particle physics, hence they support other user communities. It appears that USATLAS and USCMS take on the lions share of support for storage at US Tier-2 sites.

You can find more information here:

https://twiki.grid.iu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Storage/

Interview with ZFS techies - mentions LHC

These guys (Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore) are techies so not a sales pitch at all. Running time about 48 mins but you can do something else and just listen to it (like in a meeting :-)

http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1619/talking-storage-systems-with-suns-zfs-team

Suitable for everyone, covers a lot of software engineering ("software is only as good as its test suite") but also obviously filesystems and "zee eff ess" and storage.

Also mentions CERN's LHC, and the LHC Atlas detector in particular.
And work done by CERN to examine silent data corruption (at around 33 mins into the interview).

SRM2.2 deployment workshop - bulletin 1

This is the first bulletin for the "SRM2.2 Deployment Workshop" which will take place on Tuesday the 13th and Wednesday the 14th of November 2007. The workshop is being organised by the UK's National eScience Centre (NeSC), GridPP and WLCG. It will take place at NeSC, Edinburgh, Scotland.

The goal of the workshop is to bring WLCG site administrators with experience of operating dCache and DPM storage middleware together with the core developers and other Grid storage experts. This will present a forum for information exchange regarding the deployment and operation of
SRM2.2 services on the WLCG. By the end of the workshop, site administrators will be fully aware of the technology that must be deployed in order to provide a service that fully meets the needs of the LHC physics programme.

Particular attention will be paid to the large number of sites who contribute small amounts of computing and storage resource (Tier-2s), as compared with national laboratories (Tier-1s). Configuration of SRM2.2 spaces and storage information publishing will be the main topics of
interest during the workshop. In addition, there will be a dedicated session for the Tier-1 sites running dCache.

As SRM2.2 has been proposed as an Open Grid Forum (OGF) standard, it is likely that the workshop will be of wider interest than only WLCG. However, it should be noted that the intention of the meeting is not to continue discussions of the current specification or of any future
version. The meeting will focus on the deployment of a production system.
It is intended that the meeting will be by invitation only. Anyone who thinks that they should receive an invitation should contact Greig Cowan to register their interest.

A detailed agenda and general information about the event are currently being prepared. A second announcement will be made once these are in place.