Storage Management Technical Evolution Group:
Kick off meeting 10 Nov 2011 

Minutes

Present 

* Paul Rossman
* Philippe Charpentier
* Fabrizio Furano
* Alina Grigoras
* Jens Jensen
* Andrew Lahiff
* Massimo Lamanna
* Elisa Lanciotti
* Andreas Petzold 
* Stefan Roiser
* Paul Millar
* Giacinto Donvito
* Alessandra Forti
* Fabio Hernandez
* Andrew Hanushevsky
* Ricardo Rocha
* Wahid Bhimji
* Daniele Bonacorsi
* Yvan Calas
* Johannes Elmsheuser 
* Onno Zweers 
* XiaoMei Zhang 
* Tommaso Boccali

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Wahid welcomed the group and gave an introduction, outlining the mandate provided by the MB and some logistics.

Mandate and Logistic Round table

A round table followed where participants introduced themselves (a complete link to bios will be provided on the twiki)

There was general agreement to the mandate and logistics but the following concerns were raised: 

A few people noted that the Thu afternoon time may not be convenient (a doodle poll will be opened (see below)). 
Some people mentioned that December would be busy and so attending a face-to-face may be difficult.

Philippe noted that there is a strong overlap between the Data and Storage TEGS: 
- The data teg presentation at the gdb contained items (such as disk<->archive) that could be considered storage
- he recommended the groups be merged 
- he noted that the data teg chairs were not in this meeting 

wahid observed that there was possible demarkation but different people might cut in different ways; the membership was also slightly different.

* wahid and daniele will talk to the data teg chairs (dirk and brian) to more clearly de-mark the groups, merging activities where sensible and ensuring good communication

Jens raised the following comments: 
- How work relates to other infrastructure projects?
- interoperation ?
- starting from scratch? what about previous jamborees
- size of group - can it work effectively ?(though he expressed confidence in chairs) 
- who does it report to? 

Wahid explained it will report to the WLCG MB, (providing updates in the GDB). The work of the other jamborees will be brought in and built on. 
Wahid asked for clarification on which infrastructure projects.:
	Jens: such as EU data projects concerned with storage infrastructure
Wahid and Daniele keen to engage with other projects - but the mandate is clear that the work is focussed on needs of lhc experiments. 
Daniele - proposed we get input from what else is going on. Jens agreed that he could bridge to some of the projects.
Daniele - (re size): we wanted to capture expertise and need to be inclusive (across middleware providers, experiments and sites). Jens supported that desire to be inclusive.

Topics

Wahid outlined the "homework" questions that had been sent and thanked people for the responses so far. 
He encouraged everyone to fill in some responses and to look at what was already there on the twiki. 
He has captured some snippets on the later slides, but those were a "first pass" and it was not proposed to go through those in the meeting but rather wait for more twiki responses. 
Instead it was suggest to focus on the slide of "topics" which was based on the original list provided to the chairs with some additions from the current twiki responses and some stars representing the emerging apparent priority from the responses. 

A discussion followed: 
Paul Millar wondered whether it was expected that the group provide answers to these topics or set in train a process to answer them (as some wouldn't be resolved within timescale of group). 
Wahid hoped that this group (if useful) would have a lifetime after the initial report and be able to inform middleware development etc. over the coming years. 
Paul - yes one of his comments in the homework was that some of the previous groups focussed on storage across experiments had fizzled out and he hoped that it could be reignited. 
Daniele: Yes - not provide final answers, but point a finger and set the direction for future work.

Philippe: Not forget to be pragmatic, millions of files, on various storage systems. Migration plan could be time and effort consuming. 
Daniele: Yes - in the mandate we are asked to protect successful operations and not to be disruptive against those.
Though maybe different things would be possible at different tier levels (eg. more is possible at T2s).

Wahid asked that before next time people filled in the twiki and that we discuss things on the list. Next meeting we would concentrate on the topics. 
Paul suggest we open a web survey for the time / date.

* Wahid would set up doodles for meetings in the coming weeks. 

Daniele summarised some of the actions from the meeting: 
* All: go through the twiki and fill in. 
* Wahid + Daniele: Will talk to Dirk / Brian about overlap with Data TEG - protecting members time from avoiding discussion on the same topic and best chance of successful strategy outputs. 
* Wahid + Daniele: Brainstorm and send next "homework"