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Present: Dave Britton (Chair), Tony Cass, Pete Clarke, Jeremy Coles, Tony Doyle, Pete Gronbech, Roger Jones, Steve Lloyd, Andrew McNab, Andrew Sansum, Gareth Smith, Louisa Campbell (Minutes).
Apologies: David Colling, Dave Kelsey.
1. OS Documents
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PG will supply a draft timetable, but the OS documents should be commenced in December and drafts received before Christmas (mid-December). The OS documents are due on 22 January, which leaves approx. 2 weeks after the Festive period for finalising.
DB will write introduction and JC has been gathering information from the accounting portal – pages cannot currently be bookmarked which makes it challenging to return and update information and the plots no longer advise what the view is so the plot cannot be reproduced so the system is not fit for purpose.
Wider Context – PC will update, mostly UKT0 description.
GridPP5 Status – PG will report on the final 2 quarters (Q4 may not be available as yet).
Risk Register – PG will schedule a discussion of this at one of the December PMB.
Tier1 Status – GS and AS will update this substantial section.
Deployment Status – JC with input from PG
User Reports – RJ, DK and AS for LHC; Other experiments – JC with some input from DC and PG
Impact & Dissemination – should be dropped.
ACTION 649.1: DB will write Introduction of OS documents.
ACTION 649.2: PC will write Wider Context of OS documents.
ACTION 649.3: PG will schedule a discussion of the Risk Register at a PMB meeting in December then update this in the OS documents.
ACTION 649.4: GS and AS will write the Tier1 Status section of OS documents.
ACTION 649.5: JC will write Deployment Status section of OS documents with input from PG.
ACTION 649.6: RJ, DK and AS will write LHC section of User Reports in OS documents.
ACTION 649.7: JC will write Other Experiments section of User Reports in OS documents with input from DC and PG.
2. AOCB
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None
3. Standing Items
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SI-0 Bi-Weekly Report from Technical Group (DC)
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DC not present, no report submitted.
SI-1 ATLAS Weekly Review and Plans (RJ)
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There will be a push for ATLAS to work with Tier1 for using DIRD – there will be a need for direct action from specific Tier1s. Atlas want to see how well tape cacheing and interactions with Train jobs operate.
SI-2 CMS Weekly Review and Plans (DC)
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DC not present, no report submitted.
SI-3 LHCb Weekly Review and Plans (PC)
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Nothing significant to report.
SI-4 Production Manager’s report (JC)
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Very little new to report upon this week. Some minor updates/reminders:
1. At the EGI OMB last week I raised the concerns about the accounting portal – I will gather comments and forward the specifics over the next week or so. At that meeting (https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3243/) there was an overview about the EGI FedCloud approach to enabling GPGPUs which may be of interest https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3243/contribution/3/material/slides/.
2. The WLCG ops coordination meeting last week had as highlights the topics I mentioned in the last PMB:
* Security Operations Center WG Workshop/Hackathon
* Review of EL7 migration plans
* Providing reliable storage: presentation by BNL
We are tracking our IPv6 plans and status in https://www.gridpp.ac.uk/wiki/IPv6_site_status.
3. We are following up discrepancies between reporting on the EGI Security Dashboard and Pakiti (one highlights many more issues than the other but they were thought to reflect the same source information).
4. The ISGC 2018 (http://event.twgrid.org/isgc2018) abstracts submission deadline has moved to 13th November. JC and DB will coordinate an abstract for submission.
5. There is a GDB next week (https://indico.cern.ch/event/578992/) covering among other things: HEPiX update; LHCONE/LHCOPN updates; authorisation working group developments; Data preservation VO and approaches to machine learning on the Grid. The pre-GDB this month is focusses on the authorisation working group. WLCG task force (cost modelling) first meeting will be Thursday pm – AS will provide an overview in two weeks.
SI-5 Tier-1 Manager’s Report (GS)
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Efforts are going in to a couple of fronts as GS is training his replacement.
Martin advised that at Tier1 liaison meeting is getting on well for documents for Procurement and should be submitted soon (CPU and Disk).
SI-6 LCG Management Board Report of Issues (DB)
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There has been no MB – next one scheduled 14 November.
SI-7 External Contexts (PC)
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DB and PC had a meeting this morning for UKT0 – PC was delighted to advise that the UKT0 bid for £1.5M was approved in full (£1M for hardware and just below £0.5M for software). AS noted Anthony had responded one day earlier than agreed. There should be a discussion on how this fits with GridPP, till now it has been aspiration – we discuss collaboration and we should formalise and define this more clearly re various meetings we have. Funds must be spent by March and there will be a F2F UKT0 meeting probably early March or late February which will be much more open than last time.
DB thanked PC for leading this application and agreed we have to tread the line between making space for others to take leadership roles in this outside of GridPP and also ensuring we are not marginalised or risk drifting off in directions that may have a negative impact to GridPP in future. We should envisage how future funding of GridPP would fit with UKTO funding to decide on how we position ourselves within UKT0. Clarity is required on how embedded GridPP is in UKT0 and how to ensure we retain control of what we need to control, now that funds have been successfully acquired. Some non Particle Physics activities can be introduced and we can open dialogues on this. PC noted AS’s substantial role in this process.
DB sent Tony Medland an email on LZ, this may stimulate discussion on STFC on how GridPP relates to these aspects going forward so that may provide useful feedback.
AM noted other projects should also be discussed under this standing item on the agenda. He raised SKA – AS and AM attended a recent AENEAS meeting and the outcome was lots of very useful discussion. One of our prototype results is now the prototype of AENEAS which is excellent –There are AENEAS projects that overlap and the EOShub there is a community pilot for LOFAR, but AM noted this is merely incidental. They are keen to commence data challenges from the Spring to see what makes sense and scale as they don’t have knowledge of the operational mechanics of keeping things running at this scale across numerous institutions. AM noted we will try to merge the activity with ramping up new hardware so we can expand into this naturally and ensure we have sufficient work and storage to scale up effectively and seamlessly across participating sites. PC noted Anna has something into the PPRP on LOFAR so if this is high visibility and if Anna is participating this will be well received and something the new funds should be used for.
AM noted Richard Hugh-Jones’ joint networking activity with AENEAS with a network centre in London with Jodrill who are trying to set up demonstrations. This is feeding into the Dirac tracks and we can do files from London.
REVIEW OF ACTIONS
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638.2: AS will check when equipment is due to become obsolete and investigate legal and manpower of donation to the African Data Centre for Bioinformatics and Medical Research. (Update: AS is looking into how this may impact Global Challenge Research Fund – GCRF – which would involve a cross-Council bid). Action cannot be taken due to other pressures.
644.2: PG and AS will document plans and costings for the remainder of GridPP5 taking account of the Oracle tape issues experienced. (Update: a draft will be produced before Christmas). Ongoing.
644.3: AS put together a starting plan for staff ramp-down. (Update: a draft will be produced before Christmas). Ongoing.
644.4: AS will progress capture of funds for Dirac with Mark Wilkinson. Ongoing.
644.6: (during GridPP39 meeting) DB will ascertain what Biomed do and how they use the Grid. (Update: Holloway then Manchester and Imperial are biggest representatives – DC emailed to ascertain whether our input is being explicitly credited and was advised that GridPP has to sign up to something LSGC SLA in order to be acknowledged. (https://documents.egi.eu/public/ShowDocument?docid=2874). SL will check and sign up to this. Ongoing.
647.1: PC will update Data Management Plan. Ongoing.
647.2: DB will circulate link for Data Management Plan once agreed. Ongoing.
ACTIONS AS OF 06.11.17
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644.2: PG and AS will document plans and costings for the remainder of GridPP5 taking account of the Oracle tape issues experienced. (Update: a draft will be produced before Christmas). Ongoing.
644.3: AS put together a starting plan for staff ramp-down. (Update: a draft will be produced before Christmas). Ongoing.
644.4: AS will progress capture of funds for Dirac with Mark Wilkinson. Ongoing.
644.6: (during GridPP39 meeting) DB will ascertain what Biomed do and how they use the Grid. (Update: Holloway then Manchester and Imperial are biggest representatives – DC emailed to ascertain whether our input is being explicitly credited and was advised that GridPP has to sign up to something LSGC SLA in order to be acknowledged. (https://documents.egi.eu/public/ShowDocument?docid=2874). SL will check and sign up to this. Ongoing.
647.1: PC will update Data Management Plan. Ongoing.
647.2: DB will circulate link for Data Management Plan once agreed. Ongoing.
649.1: DB will write Introduction of OS documents.
649.2: PC will write Wider Context of OS documents.
649.3: PG will schedule a discussion of the Risk Register at a PMB meeting in December then update this in the OS documents.
649.4: GS and AS will write the Tier1 Status section of OS documents.
649.5: JC will write Deployment Status section of OS documents with input from PG.
649.6: RJ, DK and AS will write LHC section of User Reports in OS documents.
649.7: JC will write Other Experiments section of User Reports in OS documents with input from DC and PG.