Storage is popular

Storage is popular: why, only this morning GridPP storage received an offer of marriage from a woman from Belarus (via our generic contact list). I imagine they will stick wheels on the rack of disk servers so they can push it down the aisle. We need a health and safety risk assessment. Do they have doorsteps in churches? Do they have power near the altar or should we bring an extension?  If they have raised floors, can we lay the cables under the floor And what about cooling?

Back to our more normal storage management, it is worth noting that our friends in WLCG have kicked off a TEG working group on storage. TEG, since you ask, means Technical Evolution Group - the evolution being presumably the way to move forward without rocking the boat too much, ie. without disrupting services. The groups role is to look at the current state, successes and issues, and how to then move forward - looking ahead about five years.  In good and very capable hands with chairs Daniele Bonacorsi from INFN and our very own Wahid Bhimji from Edinburgh, the group membership is notable for being inclusive in the sense of having WLCG experiments, sites, middleware providers, and storage admins involved. Although the work focuses on the needs of WLCG, it will also be interesting to  compare with some of the wider data management activities.