RAL Tier1 weekly operations castor 01/09/2014

Operations News

Samneet's web query tool is under development, the alpha version is now available for use (http://www-private.gridpp.rl.ac.uk/elasticquery/CurrentESQP.html).
Plan to ensure PreProd represents production in terms of hardware generation are underway.
Disk server redeployments continue (i.e. D1T0 reused in D0T1 etc)
We have been draining a small number of disk servers without incident following rollout of a database fix last week (to all Tier 1 not facilities)
Oracle patch applied to preprod last Wednesday

Load issue on AtlasScratchDisk last weekend causing failing SAM / Functional tests and poor performance.
Duplicate files in the CMS SRM database - contacted CMS representatives and clearing up as they occur.
a couple of disk server issues BAU
passive draining produces file duplication - fixed in castor 2.1.14-14
The rebalancer has been tested and found to cause problematically large transfermanager queues even with low thresholds set. We will not be using it further until we have a fix.

SL6 castor stalled due to resource limitations & A/L
grid ftp bug in SL6 - stops any globus copy if a client is using a particular library. This is a show stopper for SL6 on disk server.

2.1.14-14 testing in preprod
A Tier 1 Database cleanup is planned so as to eliminate a number of excess tables and other entities left over from previous CASTOR versions. This will be change-controlled in the near future.

Tasks

Possible future upgrade to CASTOR 2.1.14-15.
Come up with an SL6 configuration of CASTOR nodes implemented using Aquilon.
Resume draining on the ATLAS instance once draining issues resolved.
Switch from admin machines: lcgccvm02 to lcgcadm05
New VM configured to run against the standby CASTOR database will be created as a front-end for dark data etc queries.
Replace DLF with Elastic Search
Correct partitioning alignment issue (3rd CASTOR partition) on new castor disk servers

Interventions