BiLD (Bi-weekly DIRAC Development meeting) – 15/06/2023

At CERN: Federico, Alexandre, Christopher, Simon M, Lorenzo
On Zoom: Andrei, Alexey, Bertrand, Daniela, Ewoud, Igor, Luisa, Nathan, Simon F, Ueda, Hideki, Michel, Vanessa, Janusz, Xiaomei, Alice, Vladimir
Apologies: Christophe, Andrè

Presentation of diracx

The meeting was dedicated to the presentation of diracx – a new proposed implementation/incarnation of DIRAC. The slides are attached to the agenda

• Federico presented https://indico.cern.ch/event/1292287/attachments/2657184/4621604/BiLD-diracx.pdf
  • brief history of DIRAC, current incarnation and DIRAC issues
• Christopher presented https://indico.cern.ch/event/1292287/attachments/2657184/4621602/DIRACX BiLD intro.pdf
  • basic requirement for a new DIRAC incarnation
  • followed up by a live demo, which used a locally running (on Chris’ laptop) diracx client and server (“equivalent” of a JobMonitoring/JobManager service) exposing a REST-like interface. The server was reading/writing in DIRAC certification’s JobDB (the DB was left intact). A job also submitted, its status interrogated, job search functionalities shown.
  • The live demo also showed how it will be possible to use current DIRAC client to interrogate the diracx service, thus allowing for transition.
• Federico followup: a first diracx hackathon will be held at CERN in 3 weeks. Do join! Not immediately, but you should tell us if you are on board. Time is critical.

Following questions and comments:

• Daniela
  • Consortium should have been interrogated
    • Andrei and Federico This is all new also for us - Chris² presented this to us 2 weeks ago, and is still a proposal. Nonetheless, a strong one.
  • CERN enjoys an IT infrastructure that others don’t have
    • Federico We are aware. diracx deployment will be much easier that the deployment of current DIRAC. A helm chart for deployment on kubernetes will certainly be provided.
• Luisa
  • This is an interesting proposal. CTA is looking for example to use K8.
• Xiaomei
  • Migration timeline for us is critical, as Juno will start taking data this year.
    • Andrei Juno can be regarded as a special case with extra support from the core developers to accelerate migration if needed
• Hideki
  • Concerned about migration of the extension
    • Chris Some work will need to be done there. We can provide guidelines.
• Janusz
  • What happens to the current developments?
    • Federico most of what is already developed will stay. Some issues will be migrated (e.g. many “Token-related” ones).
  • The HTTPs implementation of DIRAC is “bad”? Should we use it?
    • Federico You can use the DIRAC https implementation, but effectively for what regards the migration, it will not be needed.
• Federico
  • we are not forgetting about the current DIRAC. The level of support will stay.
  • There will be a DIRAC 8.1
  • migration to diracx can only happen if you’ll be at one of the latest versions. If you are not yet there, you will need to upgrade.