GridPP Cloud-minutes-2012-11-30

GridPP Cloud Meeting 30th November 2012

DJC = David Colling
RJ = Roger Jones
IC = Ian Collier
DW = David Wallom
CW = Chris Walker
AL = Andrew Lahiff
AH = Adam Huffman

Overview from DJC

ATLAS perspective - Roger Jones

• cloud activities ongoing, disparate projects
  • meeting with Alexei Klimentov about this
  • will be a recognised activity as service work, as well as development
  • will be discussed at technical meeting next week
  • work with Helix Nebula, use case of Monte Carlo
  • most work so far is in US e.g. BNL, permanent OpenStack
    • attempts to integrate with Panda
  • need to decide which technologies experiments converge on
• HLT farms (cf. CMS)
  • default was to add them to Tier 0
  • now considering cloud for their farm
  • Alexei keen to see UK people involved
• xrootd, Wahid involved with this
  • not just cloud, of course

• has been side projects with enthusiasts so far, largely US-led
  • needs to be broadened now

• DW asked ATLAS' opinion of Helix Nebula
  • sees it as proof of principle, of a restricted use case
  • not their main thrust
  • has benefit of raising similar problems that will occur with OpenStack
  • Monte Carlo and HammerCloud framework, so not just simulations
• DJC asked whom ATLAS working with in EIS for HLT work
  • RJ doesn't know yet but should find out in next two weeks

CMS - Andrew Lahiff and Chris Brew

• PDF on agenda
• DJC - UK quite involved in this work and increasingly so

LHCb - Raja

(standing in for Pete Clarke)

• VMDirac extension
  • developed for EC2
  • integrates with OpenNebula and CloudStack
  • using CernVM
  • CHEP talk, 160 jobs
• expect to use grid and cloud in transparent manner, hiding this from users
  • Dirac "interware" - it will deal with the complexities
  • only needs to know the relevant APIs
• will have more information in 6 months' time
• DJC asked for more details of how the VMs interact with Dirac
  • VMs send regular heartbeats back to Dirac server
• DJC asked about UK involvement
  • no one at present, mainly France and Spain at present

Interactions with other cloud projects - Dave Wallom

• very limited resources in funding and people terms
  • therefore need to use other activities and participate in them, or develop relationships
• commercial clouds seen as generally expensive
• looking towards GridPP 5 and policy
• be aware that commercial providers have rapidly changed business models
  • e.g. Amazon changing data transfer charges, followed by related Microsoft moves
  • any proposals need to be strictly up to date with latest commercial offerings
  • good relationship within NGI with Brian Shuttleworth @ Amazon Europe
• mentioned EGI Federated Cloud work
  • need to ensure we benefit from this
  • need to ensure we're "linked in" with this
  • should be joining in with federated cloud work once we're up and running, and we should be leading that work (because of our size etc.)
• there will be a stronger relationship between HelixNebula and EGI Federated Cloud task force in future
  • e.g. European Commission Cloud workshop, pushing providers to use a common set of interfaces, open standards
  • e.g. CERN presented at Berne meeting listing their large efforts re. OpenStack
  • important to share experiences
  • deployment modules are available, so less research is need than before

• IC - we are already involved with EGI Federated Cloud
  • involved in HEPiX contextualization work, now being used by federated cloud
• DW suggested supplying use cases as a good method of our community's involvement
  • there are already 6 use cases from other scientific communities
• DJC asked IC about HEPiX work
  • workgroup looking at practicalities of virtualizing worker nodes
  • VM images may be produced at one location and used in another
  • therefore need a means of trusting image provenance and integrity
  • policy adopted by EGI
  • framework for endorsing images and revoking that endorsement when needed
• DJC suggested setting up a wiki to list ongoing work

Site perspective RAL - Ian Collier

• experiments are not the only drivers for cloud use
• sites also have strong motivations e.g. CERN Agile Infrastructure
• at RAL, taking a similar approach to CERN
  • virtualizing as many services as possible
  • cloud has a role to play in their infrastructure
• other use cases within STFC development department for cloud
  • e.g. Andrew doing tests
• considering rolling parts of current capacity provision into cloud setup
  • close to being able to do that now
  • makes it easier to use cloud resources hosted elsewhere opportunistically (by gaining experience of doing it locally)
  • similar for federated cloud
• at other sites, there are already cloud activities taking place (for other reasons) e.g. Oxford
• could provide blueprints for putting overlay infrastructures on our existing infrastructures
• at RAL, will be running two clouds - internal private one (used by AL) and a public one, explicitly to integrate with federated cloud project on DMZ network
• an issue to consider - how the clouds fit into existing site, public interfaces etc.

• DJC thinks there be a lot of change to computing model during LS1
  • IC - how easy will this be at sites? analysis work will continue
  • HLT is the new work that can happen during LS1
  • DJC - post the paper writing phase, LS1 gives us more opportunity to experiment with infrastructure changes
  • analysis work pressure will be less intense, so easier to make changes then than post-LS1

Site perspective Oxford - Kashif Mohammad

• OpenStack setup
  • 20 Dell 1960 machines, not part of GridPP, OeSC
  • simply send jobs to cloud infrastructure if API is provided
  • DJC asked if EC2 interface is provided - Yes, and Nova

• DJC asked if AL been submitting jobs using glideinWMS to cloud at RAL
  • no, been using CREAM-CE and Condor, and creating worker nodes as needed, then destroyed when jobs completed
  • Condor removes the need for hacks required with other approaches (e.g. LSF, Torque)
  • script that monitors status of the Condor pool

• ECDF has an OpenStack pilot, that will be used for GridPP

• ATLAS asked if all these test clouds are available for them to use?
  • not at present
  • Oxford one not open for production work, for trials only
  • at RAL, keen for others to use their cloud for testing
    • intend to make it work in usable, automated way
• DJC asked about external access and security issues
  • Oxford cloud is outside main firewall
  • expects people to be able to use it as they would any other cloud
  • e.g. Edinburgh conditions of connection was a problem with NGS cloud pilot
  • should talk to Steve Thorne

List of Grid PP Cloud hardware - Adam Huffman

• 2 x Dell C6220 controller/admin/compute/storage nodes
• 1 x Force10 S60 switch
• 2 x Dell R420 compute nodes donated by Imperial
• More compute nodes will be transferred from the current Grid setup in future

Chris Walker

• pointed out different communities have different motivations for clouds
  • VO motivation - expand to commercial providers
  • site motivation - ease of deployment
• talks at GDBs, suggestion of grid of clouds
  • would make it easier for people other than particle physicists at QMUL to make use of their resources
  • which technology to use? OpenStack, HelixNebula or StratusLab
  • mentioned Dell presentation (Nebula appliance)

• DW - this community should learn from other communities (Swing? meeting)
  • Gavin McCance automated deployment
  • don't put eggs in one basket at this stage
  • learn from federated taskforce
  • different groups may use different technologies, for various reasons (e.g. familiarity of people with technologies)
• IC - experiments run wherever they can, OpenNebula was easier to use than OpenStack, for instance, but that's less true now
• DJC suggested different sites could use different platforms e.g. QMUL OpenNebula
  • CW suggested more impact if we all use the same thing
  • DJC suggested we're not at the stage where that is the case yet
    • we need diversity of experience
• IC - this is where we benefit from work other people are doing e.g. federated cloud, resource agnostic framework
  • build shared interfaces that work
  • work on image contextualization
  • shouldn't reproduce existing effort
  • DW echoed IC and said how you use the cloud is more important now than how it's installed

• CW mentioned WebDAV for data access, as well as xrootd
  • also the HTTP workshop (Fabrizio Furano)

• DW suggests that those sites with clouds should undertake to join the federated cloud as providers
  • DJC said we can't force sites to do this, but we should strongly encourage it

• DJC suggested setting up OpenStack on the GridPP hardware
  • asked what tests people would like to run?
  • Roger said would have more ideas in a week's time
• short meeting before Christmas
  • between now and then, setup twiki (links to projects etc.), setup resources here with OpenStack and start running CMS tests on them
  • hopefully ideas for the new year will be available by that meeting
  • DJC will try to be more involved in federated cloud meetings
• CW asked for DJC to circulate mailing list information

back to main GridPP Cloud page

--Adamhuffman 13:45, 18 Dec 2012 (GMT)