WLCG Management Board

Tuesday Sep 15, 2026, 4:00 PM → 6:00 PM Europe/Zurich

513/R-068 (CERN)

16:00 CERN/10:00 EDT/09:00 CDT

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Email Distribution List: worldwide-lcg-management-board@cern.ch
Email List Archive: worldwide-lcg-management-board (requires CERN authentication)
Minutes: Management Board Meeting Minutes
Action List: MbActionList
See also the: WLCG Document Repository,  WLCG Web Site

4:00 PM → 4:20 PM Minutes and Matters Arising

• A reminder for the registration to the WLCG/HSF Workshop, which will take place in Bologna, November 2-6 2026. Registration is open since early July: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1695268/, participation is a bit thin atm.

• We had the LHCC Week # 167, with the WLCG session on Sept 1st and the closed session on Sept 3rd

• Few recommendations this time. These are the ones specific to WLCG and not to a single experiment:

• Given the growth of AI activities within the experiments, and ongoing efforts by the collaborations to coordinate and steer them more formally, the LHCC recommends that the experiments survey the AI activities across their collaborations and define the associated MLOps requirements, particularly those with implications for the WLCG or requiring its support. The initial survey should cover MC and data production as well as large-scale analysis. The WLCG should provide a forum for these discussions.

• The LHCC recommends that the WLCG continue to monitor the evolution of hardware prices and present at the next LHCC meeting its strategy for updating the hardware cost models accordingly.

• Pledges were due by yesterday, on CRIC. Cath and WLCG Office is following the cases where expected pledges did not materialize; in some cases some delays were anticipated. Thanks to everyone who provided the reports for the RRB document; we have everything there and Cath is starting to assemble the report.

• We got back from Darkside a confirmation on their interest to apply for Associated Member. The practical way to do this is being sketched in the review of the Annex 5 (the last one we need to update). We had a presentation by them at the March WLCG MB, where many points of contact were identified for tools and common computing centers. I would like to bring the matter to the attention of the CB in November.

• ALICE has been requesting in the LHCC talk 2 weeks ago to anticipate part of the 2027 tape pledge “asap”, since that is needed to operate the disk cleaning the C-RSG had been requesting. We have a slide by Irakli on this, to set the numbers straight. See the presentation soon after this intro.

• Other stuff which should eventually go to the CB in November: 

• Annex 5 revision. It is the last Annex to be reviewed. We incorporated (much of) the comments we had received, and we have a new version. We would like to have comments from you in ~ 2 weeks to see if we can consider it ready for the CB. Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Xb4edP-nKs6A8Se7FpEZbJXZtc4vYG0jqDq0CMhw3Q/edit?usp=sharing

• Main changed have been highlighted via comments in the doc itself.

• Dates for the next LHCC-driven reviews March 1st-3rd

• ATLAS Computing TDR

• CMS Technical Roadmap

• WLCG Technical Roadmap

• All the documents expected to be submitted to the reviewers by the end on 2026 

4:20 PM → 4:25 PM ALICE Tape advancemente request

Speaker: Irakli Chakaberia (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (US))

20260915 - WLCG_MB.pdf

4:25 PM → 4:30 PM Action List Review

4:30 PM → 4:40 PM WLCG Service Report

Speakers: Panos Paparrigopoulos (CERN), Maarten Litmaath (CERN)

4:40 PM → 4:50 PM TCB Report

Speakers: Alessandro Di Girolamo (CERN), James Letts (Univ. of California San Diego (US))

260908-WLCG_CHEP26_Proceedings_DRAFT_1.pdf

N.B. We are running OTF#13 co-hosted at the XRootD & FTS Workshop at this precise time. We will try our best to connect the MB meeting.

Technical Coordination Board:

• We have prepared a draft for the proceedings of the CHEP26 plenary talk on the WLCG Technical Roadmap. We sent it to the TCB (which includes the experiment computing coordinators and WLCG lead and deputies) last week for comments and approval. We attach a copy to this Indico agenda page to solicit comments from the MB. The deadline for submission to CHEP is on September 25th; therefore we would appreciate receiving comments before next Monday. We received comments from Latchezar yesterday, thank you.

 

Open Technical Forum:

• OTF#12 was held August 25-26 2026 at CERN, Indico: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1683255/, on the topics of AI in WLCG Evolution (Tuesday and the beginning of Wednesday), followed by a session on security milestones (Chapter 6) and Heterogeneous Architectures and Infrastructures (Chapter 8) of the WLCG Technical Roadmap (TR).

  • Agentic AI for Facility Operations (Operational Intelligence at Sites): Relevant for Chapter 2 of the TR on Facility Evolution, this topic could be discussed in HEPiX as much of the rest of facility evolution is already.

  • AI in Data/Storage/Network Management: Relevant for Chapter 3 of the TR, WLCG DOMA is the natural forum in which to discuss this topic.

  • AI for Security: Relevant for Chapter 6 of the TR on security and AAI, the WLCG Security team could take the lead here.

  • Common MCP servers to access WLCG information and accounting services: Relevant for Chapter 7 of the TR on WLCG Services, WLCG Operations would be the natural forum in which to discuss this topic. We have many different information sources in WLCG so having a common interface would be helpful.

  • AI in Experimental Code Bases: Relevant for Chapter 8 on Heterogeneous Architectures and Infrastructures, the Stefano Piano and the chapter 8 facilitators can coordinate gathering experimental requirements, tracking progress on integrating experimental code into the benchmark (with the HEPiX Benchmarking Working Group), etc.

• There is an executive summary of the AI session in the Live Notes document for Tuesday, attached to the Indico agenda page, which we will not reproduce here.

• There were several clear AI-related areas of evolution relevant to WLCG, and forums where they could mainly be discussed and developed:

• OTF#13: There will be two WLCG-related sessions at the upcoming XRootD and FTS Workshop in Lyon, Sep 14-18, 2026, on the development plans and milestones for FTS on Tuesday and XRootD on Thursday. This information will help us update Chapter 3 of the WLCG Technical Roadmap on Data Management.

• OTF sessions hosted in the HEPiX Fall Workshop: While we will likely not have a decided OTF session this time, we have proposed a few topics to be presented, which will be discussed at the next HEPiX Board Meeting tomorrow.

 

DOMA:

For what concerns Data Challenge 2027 (DC27), the DOMA group is coordinating this activity, a two-week test stressing the full WLCG's data distribution ecosystem(central services like FTS, Rucio/Dirac, services at sites and HW - disk and tape, and networking) is foreseen for 22 February - 5 March 2027, with participation extending beyond the LHC experiments to DUNE, JUNO, Belle II, and SKA. The challenge aims to reach 50% of the estimated Run-4 data transfer rates (4.8Tbps), identify bottlenecks ahead of HL-LHC, and validate the move to token-based authentication for transfers, with the WLCG DOMA and WLCG Technical Coordination tracking its outcomes as input to the relevant chapters of the Technical Roadmap.

 

4:50 PM → 4:55 PM AOB