ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting Project Status Update ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting

Summary Consortium management Effort consumption Deliverables status Collaborations Overall technical status The Future Goals of this Meeting ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Consortium Management The Consortium has been running smoothly so far, although there are some concerns about recruitment and effort for some partners All partners have regularly met in the PMB meeting each month as planned All Activity leaders have regularly met in the ETICS Technical Committee meetings. Consumed effort and budget are lower than expected (around 70%). Partners affected by large deviations have to propose ways of recovering the underspending At the end of the first year, if one or more partners are underspent by a significant amount, the Project Manager and the PMB have the possibility of reallocating the budget to partners with less recruitment problems. This will be discussed if needed when the time comes, but the numbers up to Q2 will be presented and discussed already at the next PMB in two weeks time ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Effort Tracking Estimated effort consumption for the first six months: Consumed PM Budgeted PM Consumption Funded 56 79.875 70 % Unfunded 22 29.25 75 % Funded+Unfunded 78 109.125 71 % Effort and budget information are provided quite late. Please fill the timesheets by the due date!!! It is VERY important to do this to allow NA1 to monitor the project costs

Deliverables Status All deliverables up to PM4 have been submitted Out of 5 deliverables planned for PM 6 (August), three are ready for submission (NA2.2, DSA2.2, DSA2.3), one has been reviewed (DJRA2.2), one has been submitted for review (DSA1.2) Despite the effort so far, we are consistently very late. This is an aspect that has to be improved ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Deliverable Table Current and next quarter DNA2.2 Dissemination and Use of Knowledge Plan (First Update) NA2 3 – ENG R PU M06 13/10/2008 DSA1.2 ETICS Core Services Design Specification SA1 1 - CERN O DSA2.2 New infrastructures evaluation plan SA2 2 – INFN DSA2.3 Infrastructure services integration - Analysis 2 - INFN DJRA2.2 Test interface standards JRA2 4 – 4DSOFT DNA2.3 ETICS Grid Quality Certification Model activity report (year 1) M09 DSA1.3 ETICS Site Service Level Agreement DJRA1.2 IPv6 Compliance Analysis JRA1 5 – UoW ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

ETICS Usage There are currently 31 registered project in ETICS, but only a few are really used, mainly gLite and D4Science, not counting ETICS itself This a weak point to be addressed. We need to: Add new project Understand why existing projects are abandoned Is it because ETICS is too difficult to use or doesn’t do what it’s expected to do or isn’t needed? In particular we need to have example of commercial use of the system ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Collaborations New potential collaborations foreseen in the coming months (more details in SA2 presentations) EGEE ESA Unicore-based applications OurGrid BalticGrid See-Grid Are we exploring all opportunities for disseminating ETICS? Participation to seminars, conferences Training Journal articles What else? ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Project Timeline All-hands meeting Two projects are issued with a Grid-QCM certificate (gLite, UNICORE) ETICS runs on different infrastructures First new infrastructure applications built and tested with ETICS II Review All-hands meeting I Review Four projects are issued with a Grid-QCM certificate All-hands meeting All-hands meeting Kick-off Mar 08 Sep 08 Mar 09 Sep 09 Mar 10

Issues/achievements Quality of code The coming release 2.1 is solving most of the functional problems reported by users in the past. However, user-friendliness and intuitiveness are still an issue. We also need to start applying our methods on ETICS itself, add more unit tests, collect metrics and evaluate the Grid-QCM score of ETICS itself User support and Quality of Service User support is quite well established now. The support infrastructure run by SA2 is efficient, the support web site needs more material. Training is behind schedule, need to create the online training content and organize training events. We have a new web site, but it requires some spicing up to make it attractive Industrial take-up Although ideas have been discussed, there is nothing yet we can show. There seemed to be some opportunity with commercial companies related to gLite commercialization, but it’s not going well ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Issues/achievements Cross-site submission and parallel testing These features are still at the prototype level. Projects like gLite and 4DScience are picking up on these topics, but we need to be able to provide a stable implementation of these features soon Lack of maintenance of the Web Application This is creating some issues. There are bugs to be fixed and new features to be implemented (more details in SA1 presentation/planning). Users from potential new projects (dcache) are holding back also because of this issue Integration of plugins in the client This is always an issue. It has been delayed by the delays in the release of the new client, but it has to be done soon ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Issues/achievements New features Vs. usability The ETICS plan foresees many new features (release management, test workflow management, Grid-QCM reporting, support for more middleware implementations, etc) But, the main issue with users is the complexity of the user interfaces, the lack of privacy features, the complexity of the installation and maintenance procedures How can we simplify usage and at the same time keep our commitments? ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

EGI, the gLite Consortium and the Future ETICS cannot continue as an EC-funded project forever It must become part of the general activities being developed in Europe in the scientific research communities EGI and the gLite consortium always mention ‘ETICS-like’ activities in their official documents. We need to be actively present and keep the interest alive At the same time alternative exploitation strategies have to be devised and explored ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Goals for This Meeting Each one of the sessions in this AH meetings is related to some project goals I encourage the presenters to discuss about the current status, but also to give a clear overview of the plans for the next 3 to 6 months and to match the activities being presented with one or more project tasks The planning session on Wednesday morning will be an opportunity to consolidate the plan and define precise milestones In particular I expect the following questions to be addressed during this meeting ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Evaluation of the current services What are the most critical user issues? What parts of the system do they affect? What projects may benefit more by which changes (priorities)? User feedback: new features, improvements, changes? What else? ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Extension to new infrastructures: requirements and planning Which infrastructures are we targeting now? And in 6/9/12 months? What technical requirements, issues have been found? What organizational requirements, issues have been found? Lessons learned? Can be easier next time? What else? ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Dissemination and exploitation strategies How can we promote ETICS? Not just on a theoretical level, but practically (convince users to try it and stick to it)? Conferences are good of course, but sometimes too high level, what other practical channels can be explored? What about training? We can organize courses, but people have to want to be trained How can ETICS and its methods be further exploited? In particular what are the sustainability strategies beyond ETICS 2? ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Distributed testing tools: status, issues, planning What are the tools integration challenges? What are the requirements on existing parts of the system in terms of technology and deployment? Are we making sure the tools will SIMPLIFY usage and not make it MORE COMPLEX? One of most commons complaints is that doing things with ETICS is more difficult than doing them manually. User-friendliness, intuitiveness, documentation, etc must not be overlooked ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

ETICS Job Submission: architecture, design, implementation, policies What are the possible implementation strategies and what impact do they have on the infrastructures? What are the integration and deployment issues? Is there any additional effort required from users? Can we avoid it? What are the pre-requisites from the system (virtualization? security? virtual organizations? policy agreements?) What else? ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008

Grid-QCM implementation Are all required metrics collectors identified? How is the Grid-QCM score calculated (is it a plugin in itself? Is calculated asynchronously?) What about trend analysis? How is the report generator integrated with the metrics disseminators? What projects will first be run through Grid-QCM? And in the next 6/9/12 months? What else? ETICS 2 All-Hands Meeting - Palermo, 13-15 October 2008