SoC Committee Meeting

Tuesday 1 Dec 2020, 15:00 → 17:00 Europe/Zurich

Agenda:
- Support of CentOS/aarch64 by CERN-IT
- Next SoG IG meeting early 2021
- SoC Workshop in June 2021
- AOB

Internal Discussion:
Action: Ralf to create a Zoom room for this meeting.
- CERN-IT support for CentOS7 for aarch64:
   * Marc briefly summarized the proposal he received from CERN-IT. This is in preparation of the discussion with CERN-IT later during this meeting.
   * The proposal was positively received, in particular, for ATLAS which will continue using CC7 and which does not have a plan yet, when to move to C8.
   * ATLAS internal discussions are required in order to make a plan on how to start integrating CentOS7 for SoCs into the SysAdmins activities.
   Action: Diana to organize a meeting with Revital, and Ralf. The plan shall involve Maher and Tobia from SysAdmins, could possibly involve tests at the test rig, and should encompass the L1CT and possibly other (e.g. gFEX, TREX) sub-groups.
   * Marc suggested to create a working group for the practical work.
- Next SoG IG meeting early 2021:
   * It was welcomed to organise another IG meeting early next year. Possible subjects include: report of KIT, CMS sysadmin, and ATLAS L1CT.
  Action: Everybody to check the proposed date of TUE, FEB 16, 15.00 (alternatively, WED, FEB 17 14.00).
- SoC Workshop 2021:
   * Will take place JUN 1-3. Room 30/7-018 (Kjell-Johnson Auditorium) was tentatively booked. It is not clear if presential meetings will be possible. Meetings using Zoom will need to be prepared.
   * A general organization in vendor presentations, reports of activities, and discussion on common topics was suggested. Possible vendors to be contacted are Enclustra, Trenz, Xilinx.
   * Due to the lack of time, the discussion will continue at a later date.
   Action: Everybody to check availability for TUE, DEC 8, 14.00.

Discussion with CERN-IT on support of CentOS7/aarch64:
   * For the second half of the meeting, Alex Iribarren and Manuel Guijarro from CERN IT-CM joined the meeting.
   * Alex reported on the CERN support for CentOS for aarch64. The koji build system is used already today for building rpms of C8, and CERN IT provides repositories. For C7, building has to be done manually, and Alex proposed to build a minimum of upstream packages and to provide repositories at CERN.
   * Alex provided some background on the koji system which is intended for native building and requires the use of qemu for aarch64. Alternatively, if available, ARM-based hardware would be used.
   * There was some discussion on using koji at the experiment which seems difficult. Possibly, some hardware could be purchase by the experiments jointly for providing native building.
   Action: Marc, Diana, and Revital to look into options of purchasing ARM-based servers.
   * There was some discussion on additional packages that would be required by the experiments. Boost, tbb, eos, and puppet, and PXE were mentioned. It was concluded that it will take a few months in order to understand the need and the time scale.
   * Marc presented the proposal of creating a small workgroup to investigate the practical implications. Manuel suggested the use of a discourse forum for communication of the workgroup.
   Action: Manuel and Marc to see about the creation of a discourse forum.
   * Manuel reminded us about the safety aspects of using CentOS in the experimental technical control networks. Marc reported that this had been discussed in the CNIC meeting, and that Stefan Lueders consented to the approach.

15:00 → 16:00 Internal Discussion

Speaker: SoC organizing committee

16:00 → 17:00 Discussion with CERN-IT on support of CentOS7/aarch64

Speaker: CERN IT Linux team & SoC organizing committee