10th Quattor Workshop

11 Oct 2010, 08:00 → 13 Oct 2010, 13:00 Europe/London

CR03 (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)

Ian Collier Collier (RAL Tier1), Michel Jouvin (LAL)

Monday 11 October

09:00 → 10:00 Coffee & Registration

Convener: Ian Collier (UK Tier1 Centre)

10:00 → 10:30 Introduction & Welcome

10:00 Welcome & Comments on Quattor & Tier1

10:15 Introduction & Practical information

10:30 → 12:30 Tool Update Report

10:30 Quattor Usage Report

Report on the current Quattor usage, based on the survey done in September.

Speaker: Michel Jouvin (LAL / IN2P3)

Slides Quattor_Status_Report2.pdf

11:00 Proposed changes to ncm-filesystems (and a future ncm-stab)

A few months ago, Ian requested some things that make perfect sense about ncm-filesystems. I more or less have the time to implement it now, so here it goes: 1) "preserve" and "format" don't make sense anymore. They do for the installer, but not on a live system. So, the component should just ignore them. It should remove a FS if it disappears from the profile, and create it if it appears. Great care should be taken so that nothing gets removed by mistake, so check your "protected_mounts" field!!! 2) Sometimes all users need is to modify the fstab for some devices that aren't handled by this component. Say, tmpfs, SMB mounts.... according to Ian's proposal, fstab manipulation should be MOVED to a different component, namely ncm-fstab. 3) As a consequence, ncm-filesystems will depend on ncm-fstab. 4) There will be NO modifications to the current schemas for block devices and filesystems. Maybe some relaxation of the checks, to cover more FSs and pseudos. In any case, it will all be backwards-compatible.

Speaker: Luke Fernando Muñoz Mejías (CERN)

Slides ncm-filesystems-update.pdf

11:20 SCDB update

Usual status report about last SCDB developments and plans

Speaker: Michel Jouvin (LAL / IN2P3)

Slides SCDB2.pdf

11:40 Pan Compiler Status

The presentation provides the current status of the pan language compiler and a roadmap for upcoming features.

Speaker: Cal Loomis (CNRS/LAL)

12:30 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 15:00 Security Management with Quattor

13:30 Security by default: The importance of lean systems

There are a few very well-known security prinicples in information security such as security by default, security in depth. However, in reality we have seen that people very often overlook some simple but important details, which might eventually lead to a system being compromised. This presentation will give a few examples and observations that we have seen in our day to day operation and try to explore the ways of how Quattor can help improve or enhance security.

Slides Security&Quattor.pdf Security&Quattor.pptx

14:00 Cruft Removal

A brief summary of our experience trying to reducing the payload size of QWG templated machines and proposals for enhancements and changes to template layout in order to improve package control.

Speaker: Mr James ADAMS (STFC RAL Tier1)

Slides QW10-CruftManagement.odp QW10-CruftManagement.pdf

14:30 QWG Errata Framework

Slides QWG-Errata-Workshop-201010.pdf QWG-Errata-Workshop-201010.pptx

15:00 → 15:30 Tea & Coffee

15:30 → 15:50 Security Management with Quattor

15:30 GRIF Approach to Errata Deployment

Current experience at GRIF with errata deployment and future plans.

Speaker: Guillaume Philippon (LAL / IN2P3)

Slides Errata-at-GRIF.pdf

15:50 → 17:15 Development Tools

15:50 Quattor Software Process

Building the components of the Quattor toolkit, packaging those components, and testing them are all essential for maintaining Quattor as a high-quality fabric management system. The current tools and processes are not effective. This presentation provides the plan for moving to a new set of build tools and services to better support the Quattor software development and release process.

Speaker: Cal Loomis (CNRS/LAL)

Tuesday 12 October

09:30 → 10:30 Site Experiences

09:30 QWG templates Status

Usual status report about QWG templates

Speaker: Michel Jouvin (LAL / IN2P3)

Slides QWG2.pdf

10:00 Migration to QWG templates

A discussion of effort needed to migrate (part of) Nikhef's template hierarchy to QWG-based templates.

Speaker: Ronald Starink (Nikhef)

Slides migration_to_QWG_templates.pdf

10:30 → 10:50 Coffee & Tea

10:50 → 12:30 Site Experiences

11:00 Deploying SINDES at RAL Tier 1

RAL Tier1 is on the point of deploying SINDES in production on all Quattor managed system. This talk will present some of the issues, challenges and expected benefits.

Speaker: Mr James ADAMS (STFC RAL Tier 1)

Slides

• QW10-SINDES.odp
• QW10-SINDES.pdf
• sindes_for_ral2010.pdf
• sindes_for_ral2010.pptx

11:20 QWG Discussion

12:30 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 14:15 Site Experiences

13:30 BEgrid Quattor installation current state and help required from community

BEgrid (Belgian GRID) is using Quattor in a non standard way. A central server handle configurations for all the sites. Each site is running a "Quattor client" retrieving and compiling the configurations. There is no push to site. The central machine is becoming old and the hardware start failing. A fresh installation is required and it's the opportunity to refresh everything a use Quattor in the standard way. The task is not so easy and we have a lack of experience (at least at BELNET). So, we would like to present the situation and where we want to go. We expect inputs from the Quattor community to help us having a clean situation.

Speakers: David Durvaux (BELNET), Shkelzen Rugovac (IIHE (ULB/VUB))

Slides 10thQuattorWorkShop.odp 10thQuattorWorkShop.pdf

14:15 → 15:05 Nagios Configuration in QWG

14:15 Future changes in QWG Nagios templates

Nikhef's templates for configuring Nagios contain some enhancements compared to the standard QWG templates. During this presentation the differences will be discussed. Based on that, the future development of the Nagios templates can be discussed.

Speaker: Ronald Starink (Nikhef)

Slides nagios_templates.pdf

14:35 Discussion

15:05 → 15:30 Tool Update Report

15:05 Aquilon Status

Speaker: Nick Williams (Morgan Stanley)

Slides Aquilon-QWG-201010.pdf

15:30 → 16:00 Tea & Coffee

16:00 → 16:30 Virtualization Support and Experiences

16:00 Quattor and Virtualization

Quattor will play an important part in the StratusLab project--demonstrating compatibility with fabric management tools and acting itself as a tool for controlled building of machine images. The presentation provides an overview of the current state of virtualization support with Quattor and the StratusLab plans for Quattor integration/interaction.

Speaker: Cal Loomis (CNRS/LAL)

Slides 20101012-quattor-virtualization-v1.pdf 20101012-quattor-virtualization-v1.pptx

16:30 → 17:00 Miscellaneous

16:30 Building awareness and knowledge of Quattor

In this session participants will be invited to discuss ways to spread the word about Quattor. This will include Quattor's web presence and other "dissemination" activities.

Speaker: David William O'Callaghan (Unknown)

Slides dissemination.odp dissemination.pdf

16:50 Next Meeting

19:00 → 22:00 Dinner at The Coseners House

Workshop dinner at The Coseners House

Wednesday 13 October

09:00 → 10:30 Hands On

Practical session to demonstrate/discuss/try out

Convener: Ian Collier (UK Tier1 Centre)

10:30 → 10:50 Coffee & Tea

10:50 → 13:00 Hands On

Practical session to demonstrate/discuss/try out

Convener: Ian Collier (UK Tier1 Centre)