1. WLCG Middleware Support II Markus Schulz CERN-IT-GT May 2011

2. Markus Schulz Overview Status Problems? What do we need? 2

3. Fundamentally not much changed since the last discussion The 3.5 Empires are alive and working OSG – Manages their releases independently of EMI NDGF – ARC still rules dCache – gLite releases include dCache Very limited usage (none) – dCache (DESY) produce their own releases These are used and are popular Discussed at the WLCG-T1-Service Coordination M. (WTSCM) Markus Schulz3 Situation on the Factory Floor

4. gLite: gLite-3.2/1 – gLite-3.1 (SL4) On the way out – gLite-3.2 (SL5) De facto coordination by Maria Alandes (CERN) – Patch prioritisation in WLCG T1 Service Coordination Meeting EGI – Coordinates gLite-3.2/3.1 Staged Rollout EMI – Prepares the first EMI-1 release ( based on EPEL ) – Many structural changes Markus Schulz4 Situation on the Factory Floor

5. Many in WLCG assumed (naively) that EGI and EMI are some form of EGEE-x – Assumed that long standing request would stay on the work plan – Assumed that the privileged partnership between project, sites, experiments and WLCG would just happen (TMB/TCG) – Assumed that established informal exchange of change requests between experiments and developers would continue and drive the project Markus Schulz5 What we (WLCG) assumed

6. Requirements: EMI and EGI did what they stated in their work plans – Defined and documented processes to gather requirements and change requests Deliverable and milestone documents Circulated and discussed within the projects – Implemented these processes Captured some old requirements (difficult) – Gathered requirements (NGIs, etc.) – Prioritised them – Exchanged them between the projects – Wrote work plans for the next year(s) As a result EGI/EMI priority lists and WLCG expectations are not in good agreement – Resulting in discussions… – Example: CREAM-CE HA passing of arguments to the batch system Markus Schulz6 Problems?

7. For several components the direct interaction between sites, experiments and developers continued ( in a twilight zone) – ATLAS catalogue work – Infosystem – Monitoring – Condor/Cream etc. – FTS – Often not explicitly clear whether this is WLCG or EMI related Markus Schulz7 What happened II

8. EMI and EGI are strategic projects – Planning over long periods – Strong processes – Long term investment EPEL, source RPMs, Debian Support – Less rooted in the past LCG will benefit from the strategic goals LCG frequently has tactical needs – Often discovered in production Rarely whiteboard solutions Iterative solutions Sometimes treating the symptoms Needs rapid reaction LCG didn’t go through a re-birth and has memory Markus Schulz8 The Problems

9. Understanding what information has been lost – Complete the official requirement list – Effort from both sides needed A more continuous interaction between projects and WLCG – The experiments use >80% of all resources Privileged partnership? – Influence on the priorities of the development effort? WLCG needs to communicate needed middleware changes (also for relative fast changes) – For core components – Has to contain rollout plan ( including T2s) – Currently done for glexec and Cream-CE via WLCG-MB – Documentation and dissemination needed Markus Schulz9 WLCG Needs

10. How to manage the middleware effort outside EMI? – Example: Support for extra batch systems – Several teams have resources that are not part of EMI – Do we need to formalize the direct communication between sites/users/developers? – How do we deliver the resulting changes? Is there a risk of conflict between EGI/NGI and WLCG? – T1s, T2s, who decides what versions have to be run? WLCG roadmap for SL6 migration. – A bit early……. Do we have to take the LHC machine schedule into account? – Not very stable and computing doesn’t stop with the beam Markus Schulz10 WLCG questions

11. Markus Schulz Summary How do we get the lost requirements back? How do we establish a fast feedback loop? How do we manage WLCG middleware work? 11