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RAL PPD

HEPiX Report

NESC, Edinburgh

24-28 May

Windows stuff etc.

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Quick Overview3 days ‘HEPiX’ & 1.5 day Mass

Storage Worskhop• Only 2 real ‘Windows’ talks.• Quite a lot of talks linked to Grid topics.• 100 registered attendees (32 from UK)• Some significant outcomes:

– CERN/FermiLab Scientific Linux

– Testing LHC data flows into Tier 1 sites.

• Talks available at http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/hepix/nesc/agenda.htm

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Site Reports (Non-UK) 13 sites.

• MS Exchange popular. Couple of sites evaluating – including Oracle Groupware. Couple looking at Ximian connector.

• AFS – Large majority use OpenAFS.• LINUX – GSI – Debian; DESY – SUSE (but maybe move

to Scientific Linux. Knoppix mentioned. Rest RedHat/Fedora.

• Sun – 5 sites referred to Solaris• VMS – 1 site referred to this.• MAC – SLAC referred to this.• Fibre Channel / SANs – 5 sites referred to.

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Site Reports - 2

• Security points:– Kerberos important at some sites– Two sites; DHCP quarantine projects.

• (FNAL Nessus scan)– FNAL – Auto scan blocker– CERN blocked insecure protocols from offsite.– CERN had Sasser worm problems.– NERSC stressed security issues. One-time password project.

• Windows:– Several sites referred to Citrix/Windows terminal Server.– CERN – Screen server moving to production.

• IPv6 – only mentioned in one report (Caspur).

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Topics Covered

• Grid – related:– Fabric management at CERN; LCG & GridPP status.

• Security

• Batch systems; AFS; CVS at CERN;

• InDiCo conference management system;

• LINUX …...

• IBM SAN; STK information management;

• Grid storage

• Storage performance (Caspur)

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Windows

• Citrix Terminal Services at SLAC (Brian Scott)– Stressed use of secure communications

• SSL for web based session start-up• Secure ICA between client & server

– Linux and Windows clients

• SUS integration with SMS (Michel Jouvin)– SMS – ‘push’ model. Provides inventory via central

database. Needs a ‘package’ for each upgrade.– SUS – ‘pull’ model with automatic download.– SUS Feature Pack for SMS:

• Simpler – do not have list of packages.• Makes use of SMS repository – central catalogue.

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Patches Related Reports

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Integrated Digital Conferencing

Mick DraperCERN

(on behalf of CDS/InDiCo team)

mick.draper@cern.ch

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CDS Elements

• CDS grew out of the CERN Preprint server (1994)– Now packaged as CDSWare and licensed under GNU

GPL– Now installed at >20 sites including:

• EPFL (Lausanne), San Diego Supercomputer Center and most recently RERO (a Swiss consortium of research libraries)

• CDS consists of several modules– The one which is relevant today is CDS Agenda

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CDS Agenda System

• We got started in this business following a request from ATLAS to help them manage their “ATLAS Weeks”.– They were already using CDS to store their documents.

– Wanted a tool to ‘manage’ their meetings

– Among other things, wanted to have the presented material “attached” to the talks and archived.

• Created CDS Agenda:– Web interface for setting up meetings (agendas)

– MySQL database behind the scenes

– Attached material stored on a document server

– Documents automatically sent to the CDS Conversion server to provide PDF or PS versions, etc.

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INDICO, a European Project

Issues recognized by European Commission who agreed to finance InDiCo (1.6MEuros)

• Long term archiving of meetings material• Enlarging access to scientific conference content• Integrating multimedia into conference web archives• Reducing conference organization cost

• Partners: – Italy: SISSA, University of Udine– Holland: TNO TPD, University of Amsterdam– CERN

• Project was approved to start in 2002 for 2 years

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INDICO main supported features• allow access rights on each “object”• delegate responsibilities according to roles• manage submission of material• support modification of material (e.g. withdraw abstracts or papers)• define tracks and manage them• set up the programme:

– allocation of contributions to sessions– timetable arrangement

• customize conference web pages• register users• attach material at all levels• generate publications: abstracts, proceedings, etc.• create categories to classify conferences• archive the conference

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More information

• Production@CERN: http://indico.cern.ch

• CERN contact:

mailto:indico-project@cern.ch