GridPP PMB Meeting 702 (26.03.19)
=================================
Present: Dave Britton (Chair), Tony Cass, Pete Clarke, Jeremy Coles, David Colling, Alastair Dewhurst, Tony Doyle, Pete Gronbech, Jon Hays, Dave Kelsey, Steve Lloyd, Andrew McNab, Gareth Roy (Minutes), Andrew Sansum.
Apologies: Roger Jones.
1) STFC HW status
===================
- Glasgow – order received, payment scheduled for payment on 25/3/2019.
- Imperial – most of the equipment has arrived, it is believed it will be paid on time.
- Lancaster – No confirmation.
- QMUL – Ordered, received most items and waiting for the compute to arrive this week.
Manchester – Most of the equipment has arrived, it is believed it will be paid on time.
2) GridPP42 Agenda
==================
AD proposed initial agenda sent to PMB, updated on Indico (https://indico.cern.ch/event/780766/). AD has contacted vendors to ask for sponsorship for GridPP42, has been in touch with STFC legal department to ensure all is following STFC rules on this. There was some discussion about SLATE and it’s applicability to the WLCG compute model as well as how it would fit within GridPP. There was also discussion about including an LZ talk in the VO section
ACTION 702.1: DC to identify an individual to give a LZ presentation for GridPP42
3. Technopolis
==============
STFC Impact related, Technopolis has interviewed a large number of people and have asked to do a case study of GridPP. PC has corrected the first draft, looking for input regarding economic and commercial impact. DB and TD believe part of the case was to judge whether the CERN subscription is value for money. It was felt that the economic case needs to be made more strongly.
ACTION 702.2: ALL to contribute paragraphs based on economic impact and evidence of GridPP working with industrial partners.
4. GridPP6 response (email 22.03.19)
====================================
Financial tables were completed and returned to STFC with costings within 1% of the predicted costs.
- STFC commented: The finance tables you have provided (attached) must be included in your submission. This is to ensure the external reviewers have all the necessary information available to them to review your proposal. The tables can either be included in your case for support or as a separate document. However, it would be sensible to update the finances in the Case for Support with the new figures, and to also align the JeS forms to these figures. The tables also provide a useful breakdown of effort per year per work package. It would be useful if you could provide such an effort table, with named staff where possible, for clarity. Where possible, those responsible for key activities should be identified for each WP.
There was some discussion about naming Staff in the proposal and how this effects things like GDRP etc. and why this is required. It was felt that those responsible for key activities were difficult to identify as the project was designed to meet a service level. AS and TD suggest it would be useful to highlight key individuals, DB has concerns that this caused issues with GridPP5 because 7 roles were defined as non-core posts and needed to be defended. JC post which now needs to be devolved would now require to be associated with key staff. JH explained the panel will be looking to ensure the project structure is complete and each WP has a responsible party for its operation and ensuring that each staff member is value for money.
- STFC commented: A risk register is required in the case for support – I could not get the link to work in the report. In addition to the risk register, you should note what risk management and processes exist to manage risks to GridPP.
DB noted that hyperlink in submitted proposal had not been successfully preserved in converting from Word to PDF….this should be updated such that the Risk process is well outlined, it should also be noted that the full process is completed by a verbal and written report to the oversight committee on a 6 monthly cycle.
- STFC commented: Clear milestones and deliverable tables per work package should be included for clarity. Currently the Workpackage Breakdown Structure is fairly narrative and its link to the project schedule could be stronger. Milestones and deliverables tables would help to rectify this.
AS states that metrics are reviewed on a quarterly basis and reviewed by the oversight board on a 6 monthly basis. DB states that the one exception to this is WP4 where it could be argued that milestones would be appropriate.
- STFC commented: In section 5, I notice that there is not a section for WP1c. It might be worth having a section on WP1c here, if at least to summarise the effort associated to this section of the work package and the activities to be completed.
DB & PC have taken an action to add text showing that WP1c content is included in the descriptions of WP1a and WP1b
- STFC commented: The JeS forms should be grouped together, for example, there should be a lead institute (JeS form) and the other JeS forms should reference the leading JeS. There should be an option to do this on the JeS system. If you struggle to do this you should contact the JeS helpdesk (JeSHelp@rcuk.ac.uk).
There was some discussion on how we need to change the JeS forms to allow this as a joint proposal.
ACTION 702.3: GR to Update is required to Table 20 to bring numbers in line with the returned JeS forms.
ACTION 702.4: GR & DB to update risk section
ACTION 702.5: PC to draft a set of milestones for WP4
ACTION 702.6: PC & DB to add some additional text to bring things together.
5. AOCB
=======
6. Standing Items
===================
SI-0 Bi-Weekly Report from Technical Group (DC)
———————————————–
No meeting this week, HTCondor-CE.
SI-1 ATLAS Weekly Review and Plans (RJ)
—————————————
There has been an issue when attempting to merge old and new RAL in AGIS.
SI-2 CMS Weekly Review and Plans (DC)
————————————-
Nothing significant to report.
SI-3 LHCb Weekly Review and Plans (PC)
————————————–
AD is in discussion with LHCb Dirac developers to allow LHCb to use ECHO.
SI-4 Production Manager’s report (JC)
————————————-
Nothing significant to report.
SI-5 Tier-1 Manager’s Report (AD)
———————————
20th March WN on batch farm were patched and rebooted.
12th – 20th March Tier-1 was involved in the Security challenge.
SAM tests are frequently not reporting periods of monitoring.
ATLAS Jobs were failing over the weekend (not Tuesday – Thursday) because of the problems ATLAS had merging the RAL-LC2 and RAL-LCG2-ECHO sites in AGIS.
Procurement:
All Capital procurements have been delivered and installed. We expect to spend the entire Tier-1 Capital and Resource budget.
XMA CPU has been delivered, installed and HS06 were run over the weekend.
Vendor acceptance testing is ongoing for both DELL and XMA disk. We have spare capacity as not everyone is using their quota so are increasing ATLAS to meet next year’s pledge. CMS was done last year.
SI-6 LCG Management Board Report of Issues (DB)
———————————————–
No management board this week.
There was a general acceptance that the 20% per annum flat cash assumption is no longer a safe one to make, now on the order of 10% CPU and 15% for disk.
SI-7 External Contexts (PC)
———————————
Ongoing work on UKRI HTC computing requirements.
REVIEW OF ACTIONS
=================
644.4: AD will progress capture of funds for Dirac with Mark Wilkinson. (Update: funding from DIRAC. AS has emailed Mark. They are now using it more heavily. Could use the money for tape, but have to be careful not to buy tape we won’t use. May be better charging later rather than during this FY? AD will now progress. 08/10/18 – Leicester are producing a PO for tapes and will send to AD to produce an invoice). Ongoing.
701.1: AS will discuss with Antonis at RAL how costings were presented in his recent grant application. Done.
701.2: RJ, DC and PC to look at Researchfish guidelines and extract entries that are not relevant. Done.
ACTIONS AS OF 25.03.19
======================
644.4: AD will progress capture of funds for Dirac with Mark Wilkinson. (Update: funding from DIRAC. AS has emailed Mark. They are now using it more heavily. Could use the money for tape, but have to be careful not to buy tape we won’t use. May be better charging later rather than during this FY? AD will now progress. 08/10/18 – Leicester are producing a PO for tapes and will send to AD to produce an invoice). Ongoing.
702.1: DC to identify an individual to give a LZ presentation for GridPP42.
702.2: ALL to contribute paragraphs based on economic impact and evidence of GridPP working with industrial partners.
702.3: GR to Update is required to Table 20 to bring numbers in line with the returned JeS forms.
702.4: GR & DB to update risk section
702.5: PC to draft a set of milestones for WP4
702.6: PC & DB to add some additional text to bring things together.