1. BalticGrid Operations
General overview of the operation of the BalticGrid
Mario Kadastik
NICPB, Tallinn
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

2. EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007
Content
Organization of the operations
Site registration
Updates and upgrades
Support system
Operations meetings
Infosites portal
Status
Current sites in production
Candidate sites
Issues
Accounting problems
DGAS migration planned
SL4 migration
IA64 support
Tutorials
Advanced gLite tutorials
use of BalticGrid testbed
Plans for the coming year
Conclusions
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

3. Organization of Operations
Site registration
New sites register themselves by opening a ticket in the support system using the same form as used in EGEE for GOC-DB registration.
Sites which are not part of testbed, are also registered in GOC-DB to become candidates for production.
Sites adapt EGEE policy for a joining site. This includes mode of operations, announcements as well as security policies and contacts.
Updates and upgrades
Smaller updates are installed by sites upon being published with EGEE broadcasting tools.
Large scale updates (new release of middleware, operating system changes, urgent security updates) are centrally coordinated.
Testbed systems test new releases and updates before installed on production sites.
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

4. Organization of Operations
Support system
Local use: RT (request tracker) system at
For tickets which span further than just BalticGrid we use GGUS. Production sites also respond to tickets opened centrally through GGUS.
RT used for both site support as well as user support.
Operations meetings
Joint meetings with SA1, being a weekly VRVS meeting through discussion of active issues as well as a round table discussion going through all sites
SLA-s
All Baltic NREN-s have signed an SLA agreement with BalticGrid to provide the level of networking neede by the project (first time in Europe for Grids)
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

5. EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007
Infosites portal
Was originally designed to do more intensive stress testing to see problems which don’t show up during quick SAM tests
Is gathering data about sites and provides that in an easy format
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

6. EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007
Status
Estonia
Production: EENet, NICPB
Candidates: TUT*, UT*
Latvia
Production: IMCSUL, RTU
Lithuania
Production: ITPA, VU, KTU*, SU*, VGTU*
Candidates: KMU*, BGM*, MII*, VDU*, IBT*
Poland
Production: Poznan, IFJ-PAN, Cyfronet*
Sweden
Production: PDC
* a site which is not a partner in BalticGrid project
KMU - kaunas medical university
BGM - company
MII - Institute of Mathematics and Informatics
SU - Shauliai University
VDU - Vidaudas Daugas University
VGTU - Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
KTU - Kaunas University of Technology
PDC - ParallellDatorCentrum
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

7. EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007
Accounting issues
RGMA stability causing serious concern
Accounting information almost never up to date
incomplete publishing
number of views with different caching periods
We had serious problems gathering the accounting data for the first review
JRA1 of BalticGrid has studied different accounting systems and chosen DGAS as a potential alternate accounting system
DGAS test servers being installed as we speak
Will try as seamless as possible integration with gLite and will share the experience
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

8. EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007
SL4 and IA64
A lot of sites waiting for SL4 upgrade possibility
Not only WN and UI, but also other services like WMS, RB, BDII
Some hacking has allowed to run some of the services already now, but these are dirty hacks
In addition BalticGrid has quite a number of clusters on IA64 architecture and would like to see when they will be able to join gLite middleware (currently running LCG 2.7)
A timeline to the future would be appreciated
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

9. EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007
Tutorials
Used to use Gilda for tutorials
during summerschool had a clash of three separate events on Gilda causing problems for students
Now we use BalticGrid testbed for tutorials as well as some smaller clusters
All Hands Meeting in Riga in October ‘06 already used the infrastructure with good results
We plan to extend the usual tutorials with more advanced gLite demonstraction like parametric jobs as well as data management
Should help users to their first steps with real applications as these will no doubt use more than just hello world
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

10. Plans for the coming year
Official targets
2M computing hours
100 users (already met in year 1)
10 disciplines
6 application codes
20 international collaborations
2 certified sites per country by end of project (done)
Concentrating on better support infrastructure
ticketing system now as a primary method
rotating shifts for ticket watch
Better application support
more advanced tutorials to help users get the real feeling of the power of Grid
Specialized groups who visit scientists and help them to port their application to Grid
And of course better collaborations with associated projects, but I think we are doing already pretty good there
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007

11. EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007
Conclusions
BalticGrid and EGEE very similar
EGEE Northern ROC Manager and BalticGrid Project Director the same person
Helps a lot in communications between the two projects
In most cases EGEE infrastructure for central services is being used
GGUS ticketing
GOC-DB
Most sites registered in EGEE as well
Same middleware of course
Will experiment around with some tools and provide the feedback back to other related projects
DGAS
BalticGrid infosites
Tycoon for computing SLA enforcement (far future)
EGEE ROC Meeting, Karlsruhe, 5th February 2007