Phone Coordinates

1. Dial Toll-Free Number: 866-740-1260 (U.S. & Canada)
2. International participants dial: Toll Number: +1 303-248-0285
       Or International Toll-Free Number: http://www.readytalk.com/intl
3. Enter 7-digit access code, 3073828 followed by #

February 26th, 2015 - 3:30-4:30 pm - Madrone meeting room, ROB (a.k.a. Bldg 48), 2nd floor.

January 15th, 2015 -    11am-1pm - Madrone meeting room, ROB (a.k.a. Bldg 48), 2nd floor.

  • DOE request (advanced draft of the report must be ready by Feb 6, 2015):
    "assemble a summary of potential computing

    hardware requirements needed to support the DOE High Energy Physics

    program at the laboratories for the next 5 years."

  • HEP Software Foundation Workshop, SLAC, Jan 20-21 2015  (http://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/workshop-slac-jan-2015)
  • The next Unix Town Hall meeting will be in Sicamore on Jan 22 at 3pm.
  • PPA/PPA-SCA status
  • AOB.

May 2nd, 2014  -  10:30am-noon  -  Madrone meeting room, ROB, 2nd floor.

... continue from last week.

April 23rd, 2014   -   3:30-4:30pm   -    Kavli 2nd floor meeting room.

There is much to talk about. This is just a small start. We'll meet again in few days.

October 31st, 2013 - 2:00-4:00pm - Madrone conference room B48 (a.k.a. ROB)

  • Budget and PPA status
    • there is an ongoing review of the computing in HEP. Timeline: a report should be ready in December.
      The charge is to assess what is going on in the field and where the money is going.
      The 10% (people+hardware: 75M$) of HEP budget goes into computing resources.
      Solutions need to be found in order reduce the amount of funds that go into HEP computing.
      • Are common projects an option in our Collaborations based world? 
  • SLAC networking to NERSC (Tony)
    • Very close to hit the ceiling in the 10GBit between SLAC and NERSC.
      A dedicated NERSC network connection from SLAC?
      Need to make a proposal.
  • LSF and MPI (see the progress report and meeting notes)
    • Better aggregation of single slot jobs on the same hosts, Is it ok for jobs with high I/O rates ?
      Also a wall time limit will be enforced. What about the CPUF ?
  • Conferences
  • From previous meeting
    • Status of hardware purchases (PPA-ATLAS-Theory , Fermi)
      • PPA part will be indefinitely suspended, ATLAS money is use or lose, Theory group will go on with their part of the purchase as well.
        The infiniband and other infrastructure are missing at this point (it was in the PPA part). So the acquisition plan needs to be reviewed.
    • Policy Task Force
      • no update - it will involve mainly desktop systems, no scientific computing or data acquisition systems will be touched (not directly at least...).
      • 1.6M$ ...
    • SRCF update
      • not much here ...
    • Migration from RHEL5 to RHEL6
      • No more RHEL5 support at SLAC past Dec. 31st 2013.
        BaBar requested to retain a single RHEL5 build machine in the build queue.

September 18th, 2013, 10:00am - Cedar conference room B48 (a.k.a. ROB)

  • Hardware purchases
    • PPA+ATLAS+Theory
      • cores will go up to 46k, PPA subsidizes infrastructure and storage
      • see details: https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/SCA/Modeling+PPA+Cluster+Needs
      • accounting problems sorted out, order ready to go out anytime
      • hardware expected up & running by end of calendar year
      • New features with LSF: dynamic cluster and multi cluster management (with licenses) together with fairshare accounting
    • Fermi storage acquisition (disk + tapes)
      • what happened to the centralized storage planning ?
  • Policy task force meeting for account deletion procedures later today (Andrea Chan).
    • Policy task force charge: develop cyber policies for the lab to address the lack of policies for IT
    • Following up on DOE inspection of SLAC IT
    • A number of issues: from management, remote access, ... and very little exists about procedures.  Main focus is on windows accounts.
    • Other points to review: security, network, documentation and procedures, ...
  • SRCF status update
  • Migration to RHEL6 and end of support for RHEL5
  • ...
  • AOB

June 24th, 3:00 pm - Madrone conference room (ROB)

  • DPHEP Collaboration Agreement
  • Resources and changes
    • LSF 9: mid August if no problems.
    • Black Boxes: turn off by end of CY ?
    • Migration to RHEL 6 of all batch nodes: not all groups ready, so it is a "not for now".
    • 30k shares temporarily allocated to Theory (10k each from Atlas, BaBar, Fermi).
  • SRCF status update.
  • Invest in institutional computing?
  • AOB

May 10th, 2013, 3:30pm - Madrone conference room (ROB)

March 28th, 2013, 4pm - Redwood conf room (ROB)

  • Tina: New version of the charge for PPA Scientific Computing Coordination (pdf)
  • Random notes from the meeting (PLEASE: FEEL FREE TO CORRECT)
    • PPA planning for CPU/disk/tape acquisitions (spending: 300k$ for FY2013)
    • LSF 9.1 in testing, mpi not working yet
    • Computing needs and Tools
      • large overlap between CDMS, DarkSide, LZ, etc...
        • propose/develop common tools and platforms
        • High cost of next generation pushes toward cooperation
        • Apply for grants ? Should this matter be advertised within PPA ?
      • Some groups have none or little money for computing but they need support (LSST, EXO, LBNE,...)
        • EXO needs better support for ROOT, Python, TWA, ... that right now happens through BaBar
          • centralized ?
    • Loss of institutional knowledge
      • waste of time reinventing the wheel after making the same mistakes over and over ...
      • How do we protect such knowledge?

February 5th, 2013

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