Notes on the Service Challenge Meeting at Sara/Nikhef - 12oct04
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
these are the notes from Les Robertson plus some corrections/additions from Jules Wolfrat

People present -
Kors Bos, Roger Jones (Lancaster-ATLAS), James Casey (CERN), Tim Smith (CERN), Arjen van Rijn (NIKHEF), Peter Michielse (NCF), Jeremy Coles (RAL), Gilbert Poulard (CERN/Atlas), Cees de Laat (UvA), David Salamoni (NIKHEF), Jules Wolfrat ( SARA ), Stan Bentvelsen (NIKHEF/Atlas), Pieter de Boer (SARA), David Groep (NIKHEF), Bruno Hoeft (FZK), Kees Neggers (SURFnet), Mark van de Sanden (SARA) 

Afternoon discussion -

SARA - CERN -

Network options at CERN:
a) 6 X 1 Gbps multiplexed (trunking on 10 Gbps line). Needs same multiplexor at each end.
Needs router slots and multiplexors at CERN and SARA
b) 10 Gbps connection at each end
c) fallback to use the GEANT connection
SARA 
At present have a 1 Gbps link into P1 (32-way shared memory SGI).
The disk system used for this (GRID) is connected only by 2 X FC 2Gbps connections to the SGI (max aggregate capacity is 400MB/s) . 

Proposals to be investigated -
Short term - 
SARA - add 5 X 1 Gbps connections to P1 
SARA can add 3 X 1Gbps connections to P1 
CERN - try to find additional 5 X 1 Gbps connections 
Both - install trunking multiplexors (~2K $). 
I understood that we only need this if you connect via the Force10 of UvA at SARA , but we don't need it if we connect to the 15454 at SARA.

Longer term - 
Investigate 10 Gbps connection to the SURFnet line at both ends.

Monitoring information - 
- try to use Mona Lisa as a front end - hope to get support from Iosif Legrand & co. 

Line reservation - 
Cannot use it until after 11 November 
end of November 

Schedule -
one week - establish short term network
prior to 15 November - setup and software test using GEANT 
end of November 
15-30 November - testing of the SURFnet (probably trunked) 
End of November - early December 
Check-up at a meeting during EGEE conference
1-8 December - 2-week performance challenge. 
Starting second week December 

FZK - 
Need two weeks to get the network connected at ~8 Gbps using a special tunnel (via France) - ending up on the GEANT POP in Geneva.
FZK uses dCache in front of TSM. Disk servers use GPFS with SAN behind.

General -
1. The architecture to be used at SARA/NIKHEF is still to be worked out.
2. We need to set deadlines for Tier-1s to explain their architecture (GDB and Phase 2 Planning)

Next meeting - Karlsruhe -