19th September 2008

CERN

CERN openlab held its 5th Major Review meeting on Sept. 18th (these meetings were previously called “Quarterly”). In total, in the morning, there were seven technical presentations which covered the work done in openlab since the Annual Board meeting in April.

• One of the highlights was Renaud Barrillère’s talk about the work in the area of controls that will now be started with Siemens, the latest openlab partner. Renaud announced that four posts have been opened (one staff and three fellows) to cover all the activities that have been agreed.

• Andrzej Nowak covered the recent results in the Platform Competence Centre. Amongst multiple other items, he mentioned that an Atom processor, consuming only a few Watts, has been tested for throughput computing and a report is forthcoming.

• Eric Grancher and Chris Lambert covered the Oracle activities in the DES group and Eva Dafonte did the same for the DM group. Oracle Enterprise manager is gathering momentum, allowing a scale-out in the management domain without a need for additional manpower. Oracle Streams continue to act as a vital underpinning for data replication across LCG.

• Max Böhm and Daniel Rodrigues covered the work done with EDS. GridMap has been adapted to several new deployment areas and there is considerable interest in the product from external partners (a separate news will follow).

• Jose Dana covered the work in the Grid Operability Centre which has been sponsored by HP Labs. Since no new proposals for collaboration with HP Labs were accepted it is unlikely that they will be part of openlab III (2009 – 2011).

• Finally, Ryszard Jurga and Milosz Hulboj described the progress made inside the CINBAD joint project with HP Procurve. They reported that the data from network monitoring is beginning to give interesting and significant results (a separate new item will follow).