From j.p.emerson@qmul.ac.uk Fri Apr 25 17:12:48 2003
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 16:29:25 +0100
From: Jim Emerson <j.p.emerson@qmul.ac.uk>
To: Malcolm Stewart <jms@roe.ac.uk>, Mike Irwin <mike@ast.cam.ac.uk>,
Peredur Williams <P.M.Williams@roe.ac.uk>,
Richard McMahon <rgm@ast.cam.ac.uk>, Andy Lawrence <A.Lawrence@roe.ac.uk>
Subject: WFAU WSA weekly meeting minutes: 11 April 2003
VDFS Mgt team
Please read these WFAU meeting minutes and feedback any comments to me.
Jim
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Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 11 Apr 2003
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Present: NCH, PMW, ETWS, IAB, MAR, AL
Apologies: HMG
In Attendance: MFO
Actions discharged:
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ACTION: NCH to ask JNTD/HME to review current Hardware design doc and supply
thoughts/comments.
ACTION: PMW to check that a digital projector has been booked for 15/16
and check the situation as regards duplication of hardcopies of the
review documentation.
ACTION: NCH to ask if AJV or MFO would have the time to attend the dry run
to comment.
ACTION: ALL to think about a "piece de resistance" for the User Interface
presentation.
ACTION: ETWS to consult with HME, MJI at CASU and JANET web pages as to any
likely financial implications of WFAU making heavy use of the
network
- all done and discharged (thanks to all concerned!)
Actions partly discharged but continuing:
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ACTION: ALL to review risk register and think of any new internal or
external risks that should be documented in the risk register.
- continuing; thanks for progressing these.
Actions carried forward from 4/04/03 meeting:
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ACTION: JMS to review software tasks in build GANTT and comment on the
plan.
ACTION: PMW to liaise with AL to make sure that Compute Support are
made aware, from the highest "official" level, of
our requirements, re. 100 Gbyte/day transfer from CASU, and to
impress on them that the 1 Gbit/s FW should be their highest
priority.
- CONTINUES
Specific points and new actions:
--------------------------------
Bulk of today's meeting was taken up with a dry run of the presentations
for next weeks review; no new actions for this week.
Hardware:
NCH & RGM reported useful discussions with Andy Knox as to high IO hardware.
IBM manufacture a hardware RAID 5+0 unit which is a possible, but expensive,
solution (controller is based around 4 Ultra160 SCSI RAID controllers with
high-speed interconnect and hardware striping across the controllers). NCH
also pointed out that IBM have an "approved used equipment" arm to their
business, which may be an option to get the required storage on SCSI disk
within the existing budgetry constraints.
AL reported that there are ways forward on getting more hardware money
(eg. SRIF monies, getting more closely involved with a given manufacturer);
most important at this stage was to get review panel feedback on the
hardware design and then to come up with a limited number of design options
along with pros and cons to negotiate with vendors. Al further reported
that Alex Szalay's team are now reporting 700 Mbyte/s trawl rates using
SCSI RAID and Itanium 64-bit processors and suggest IDE speeds would be
about half of this. Also noted that Bob Grossman of U Chicago has developed
a TCP/UDP hybrid networking protocol that has some of the performance
advantages of the latter but with some of the security of the former.
ETWS reported:
"I've asked Mike Irwin and Horst about network charges, but have no
replies until now. Also I've searched the UKERNA website for some
information. The JCN (JISC - Joint Information Systems Committee) Committee
on Networking is still basing the network charges for an Academic Year on
the use of the transatlantic lines. (This may change in the future.) The
charges will be based on the actual chargeble usage during the ending AY.
The total amount payable by each institution will be calculated as:
(% of chargeable usage for the given time period)x(total sum to be raised)
There are two points which apply (still?):
- the use of international bandwidth during the period 01.00 - 06.00 hours
will be non-chargeable.
- use of the National Cache will be non-chargeable.
To fill this with some numbers for the AY2002/2003. The traffic data was
collected during May 2000 - April 2001, the total amount to be raised is
4,250,000 Pound (incl VAT):
ROE (PPARC): 105.750 GB => charge 1,147.77 Pound (incl VAT)
UoE: 5,137.925 GB => 55,765.27
UoC: 14,922.748 GB => 162,231.24
If you would like to see the complete table look up the second point in
the Notes to Table of Network Charges for AY 2002/03:
http://www.ja.net/service_terms/charging_table_notes.html"
Evidently, any new charges for increased network usage are impossible to
predict as all figures are based on transatlantic usage. The threat of
intra-UK charges remains, and should be kept in mind.
Miscellaneous:
ACTION: NCH to type up and circulate these minutes
DONM: 10am, Friday 25th April, plate library.