Experiences with the use of Open Source Software in

an Operational Environment

Riga 07.04.2005 – Baltic IT&T Forum 2005

Roar SkålinDirector of information technology,

met.no

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Norwegian Meteorological Institute – met.no

• Responsible for meteorological observations and weather forecasts for Norway, the adjacent sea areas and Svalbard

• HQ in Oslo, regional offices in Tromsø and Bergen

• Three stations in the Arctic: Jan Mayen, Bear Island and Hopen

• Five airport offices• Staff: 465• Operational production 24 hours a day, 365 days a year

The meteorological station at Bear Island

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

The Meteorological Production Chain

• Measurements of the state of the atmosphere (observations)

• Global exchange of observations

• Computer simulations of the future state of the atmosphere (forecast models

• Interpretation by forecasters

• Presentation and distribution

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

met.no Production Chain 1998

Message SwitchTandemIn-house SW

HPC SystemCray UnicosConsortia SW

Control SystemSgi IrixConsortia and In-house SW

MeteorologicalWorkstationIrix/WindowsIn-house and3rd party SW

DistributionIBM Aix/SGI IrixOSS and In-house SW

Data archiveSgi Irix3rd party SW

Data collection

Aix/Windows3rd party andin-house SW

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Pros and Cons of Open Source Software

+ Shorter ”mean-time-to-repair”+ Reduced investment and operating costs+ Attractive employer for IT-personnel+ In-house competence and eager employees

– Migration cost and time– High degree of freedom– High dependence of in-house competence

0 Quality of software0 Support of software

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Our Strategy• Standardisation of operating systems

– Linux for meteorological production, visualisation and distribution, for research and for office support (when feasible)

– MS Windows for administrative services, some observation systems and office support (when necessary)

• Standard applications and development framework– Evaluate OSS and use OSS in combination with in-house,

consortia and 3rd party software when appropriate

• Meteorological models– Consortia based software– Encourage OSS and insist on open standards

• Administrative services and observation systems– 3rd party software– Encourage OSS and insist on open standards

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Implementation and Migration

• Architecture

• Duplication of all critical servers• Incremental process

– Year 2000 issues– High cost systems– Other systems on demand or when upgrade is required

Servers

Production, Application, Databases Terminal, File

Desktops

Thick Thin Thick

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

met.no Production Chain 2005

Message SwitchLinuxOSS (met.no)

HPC SystemLinuxConsortia SW

Control SystemLinuxConsortia, OSS and in-house SW

MeteorologicalWorkstation

LinuxIn-house and

OSS

DistributionLinuxOSS and In-house SW

Data archiveLinux3rd party SW

Data collection

Linux/Windows

3rd party andin-house SW

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Examples of Open Source at met.no

• OS: Linux, User Mode Linux (UML)• Desktop: KDE• Languages: gcc, Perl, Python, PHP• Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL• Web publishing: OpenInteract• Applications: Apache, Tomcat, Bind, Exim,

Autofax, OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios• Tools: OpenSSH, OpenSSL, SAMBA, FreeRADIUS• Formats: NetCDF, HDF, XML• Middelware: Corba• Configuration: cfengine, Kickstart

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Open Source contributions by met.no

• Web-based HelpDesk• Web publishing system: wgen• Meteorological Message Switch: Norcom• Minor contributions to several OSS systems, most

notably the web publishing system OpenInteract

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Competence

• Use of OSS requires access to relevant competence:– system engineers with a genuine interest in OSS tools

and high ability to continuous learning by doing– system developers with a basic understanding of both

methodology and programming and a genuine interest in OSS

• The management must – be able to trust an open community (rather than a

commercial company) – have a basic understanding of OSS, including licences

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Economy

• Cost of Migration– Total cost € 750 000 - work carried out by internal personnel – Most of the cost due to Y2K and other necessary upgrades

• Cost of Operations– Annual maintenance cost (HW and OS) reduced by € 250 000– Increased staff by one system engineer - Annual cost € 75 000

• Cost of Hardware– Cost per server down 80 - 95% since 1999– Due to both lower HW cost and standardisation on Linux– # of servers increased by a factor of 10 with reduced budgets

• Cost of Software– Overall budget reduced by some 20%– Still have licences for some of the main cost drivers: administrative

systems, backup/archiving, Oracle, some Windows and Adobe

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Economy: Two examples

• The message switch– Cost of operations 1998: € 75 000– Cost of migration (developing a new system): € 75 000– Cost of purchasing new HW: € 7 000– Cost of operations 2005: ≈ € 0

• The Oracle based climate database– Cost of operations 1998: € 75 000– Internal investment in SW based on Oracle: 10 man-

years– Conclusion: Keep Oracle, move the system to Linux– Cost of operations 2005: € 50 000

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Security aspects of OSS

• Availability– Use stable versions and User Mode Linux (UML)– Stability issues resolved by online documentation/newslists,

help from development teams or locally produced patches– Fixes for problems related to incompatible software or

unsupported software (missing drivers!) normally available from the net

• Integrity– Prior to installing DMZs and UML, we had one occurrence of

misuse of our Linux based ftp-server

• Confidentiality– The software is open by definition– Not experienced any problems related to data

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Interoperability

• Exchange of data within the meteorological community based on open formats such as HDF, NetCDF, XML, GRIB

• Linux network operating system has not caused any problems

• For administrative systems, formats like doc, ppt and xls reduces flexibility– Standardised on one office system internally

(currently Microsoft Office)– Must be able to receive these formats– Policy on not sending these formats unless

requested by the receiver

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met.no

Conclusions

• Use of OSS has resulted in– Reduced operating cost– High availability– Highly motivated personnel

• In house competence has been highly beneficial and in some cases instrumental

• The combination of– Using OSS in a standardisation process

– Implementation on demand

has reduced the cost and man-time of implementing the OSS strategy