WLCG Management Board #316

Europe/Zurich
ZOOM only

ZOOM only

Simone Campana (CERN)
Description

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

URL for the ZOOM call: https://cern.zoom.us/j/66011416092  (the passcode has been distributed by email)

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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 RepositoryWLCG Web Site

Videoconference
WLCG Management Board
Zoom Meeting ID
66011416092
Host
Andrea Sciabà
Alternative hosts
Maarten Litmaath, Simone Campana
Useful links
Join via phone
Zoom URL
    • 16:00 16:30
      Minutes and Matters Arising 30m
      • Preparation for the next European Strategy for Particle Physics 10m

        From the March 2024 CERN Council: 

        ##

        [...] the Council approved the overall timeline for the next update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. The deadline for the submission of community input will be 31 March 2025, and an email on the subject will be sent soon by the President of Council to the community. The goal is to conclude the process in June 2026, with the Strategy updated by the Council. A more detailed timeline will be established over the coming months.

        ##

      • Contact person for token integration 10m
        Speaker: Martin Barisits (CERN)

        Right now several projects are suffering from the fact that there is an "empty space" between the group defining the theoretical implementation of tokens (aka the WLCG AuthZ group) and the projects who have to actually develop and integrate this technology (Rucio, FTS, others).
        None of the developers in the projects are token experts, thus a lot of the decisions have to be made by guessing and trial and error, a workflow which not only costs significant time, but is prone to errors and potentially security flaws.

        To bridge the gap between the theory of tokens and technical implementation we would request that WLCG finds and nominates a person responsible for Token Integration in WLCG. This should be a technically focused person, who actively works with the projects, able to debug issues, give technical recommendations, and gives guidance in policy decisions.

      • Preparation for pledging ARM resources 10m
        Speaker: David Britton (University of Glasgow (GB))

        So far, 3 of the four experiments have run significant work on the Glasgow ARM-farm; the fourth, LHCb, are just getting going. I believe that ATLAS and ALICE were successful. CMS was mostly successful with Monte Carlo data, but ran into some difficulties with detector data: They state the following:

        "The CMS physics validation on ARM was mostly successful for Monte Carlo simulated events, but significant differences which are not understood at this time have been found for detector data in several subsystems, including muons, tracking, and the electromagnetic calorimeter. Further investigations will be enabled by using the ARM resources at CNAF during 2024, subject to finding the necessary extra effort, but at this time CMS is not in a position to be able to use ARM processors in production."

        Next, I'd like to see if we can get to the point where some fraction of pledges can be made next September using ARM resources, at least for ATLAS and ALICE. To get to this point, we need agreement on what fraction of resources can be pledged. Obviously Analysis workflows have not been (universally) ported or validated so they will want to restrict the level of ARM pledge. My suggestion is 20% - corresponding to a 5-year lifetime and thus an average refresh of 20% of a site. 

        Would it make sense to have a (pre)-GDB in June for the experiments to present their findings/experiences/concerns and to discuss moving forward? I note that the incentive for Experiments is the reduction of carbon per job; the incentives to sites are (a) reduced carbon generation; (b) reduced power consumption; and (c) more options during procurement to stimulate competition. The downside is increased complexity of running heterogenous infrastructure.

      • Analysis Facilities: LHCC charge 10m
        Speakers: Alessandra Forti (University of Manchester (GB)), Simone Campana (CERN)

        From the last LHCC: 

        ##

        Analysis Facilities is a broad topic. The use cases and the expectation of the experiments, and of the analysers may evolve over time. The scope and the expected content of the document to be provided by the experiments must be clearly defined. To this end, a list of questions must be defined first that seek to define the expectations from experiments for Analysis Facilities. The questions, to be answered by experiments, must be picked such that the answers are useful for sites and are representative of a broad spectrum of analyses and analysers. The list of questions might evolve in the future.

        The LHCC charges WLCG with establishing such a list. This process will be iterative and must involve the HSF Analysis Facilities Forum, the sites and the experiments.

        ##

        We need to finalise this at the WLCG workshop. This means:

        • collecting input from the experiments
        • sharing it with the facilities and get early feedback 
        • discuss the feedback at the workshop 
        • wrap up and finalise 

         

        The schedule is very tight. Proposal: 

         

        1) We collect input from the experiments in the next 2 weeks. Deadline: 30 of April

        2) We ask the sites to provide feedback. Deadline: 7th of May 

        3) We start digesting the feedback and prepare for the F2F discussion one week after

        Comments? 

        Input to be provided in this document: 

        https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ALWRbYw0HIjWhI-LSYSiEaCFf1qrSqeneAclLfqlJ5s/edit#heading=h.c4zsj1m0vq9k

         

         

    • 16:30 16:35
      Action List Review 5m
    • 16:35 16:45
      WLCG Service Report 10m
      Speakers: Panos Paparrigopoulos (CERN), Maarten Litmaath (CERN)
    • 16:45 16:55
    • 16:55 17:00
      AOB 5m
      • Next MB Meeting: Tuesday 21 May 2023 1m