RC Forum, phone meeting 22 Nov 2011 =================================== Participants: Neil Geddes, RAL Oxana Smirnova, NDGF Mauro Morandin, Luca Dell'Agnello, INFN CNAF Achim Streit, Andreas Heiss, KIT Gonzalo Merino, PIC Marcin Radecki, CYFRONET Rolf Romler, IN2P3 Tiziana Ferrari, EGI.eu Absent SARA/NIKHEF INTRODUCTION AND TERMS OF REFERENCE (T. Ferrari) =================================== Purpose of this phone meeting is to discuss areas of common interest that can justify the creation of a Resourece Centre Forum. T. Ferrari presents the proposed mandate and the benefits (from an EGI.eu view point) about the creation of a Resouce Centre advisory board (see slides). The draft Terms of Reference propose that the board is chaired by a Resource Centre representative. However, creating a Resource Centre Forum as a EGI board has several important implications: reporting lines connecting the RC Forum and other EGI boards, willingness to cooperate for the good running of EGI, contribution to the EGI strategy plans, willingness to share results with all EGI RCs. O. Smirnova: is participation to the RC Forum limited to European centres/ T. Ferrari: no, EGI is a integrated infrastructure comprehending sites outside Europe (Latin America and Asia Pacific for example). MoUs signed with various external resource infrastructure providers. A MoU with OSG is being discussed. M. Mauro: to start with, we should keep the focus on European sites T. Ferrari: agree with this, but in general the board should be open to sites willing to contribute A. Streit: EGI should serve as bridge to new user communities and should facilitate contacts, as this is part of its business development activities. T. Ferrari: correct. This is mentioned in the proposed Terms of Reference and starting with PY2 outreach activities will be part of a yearly EGI strategy plan. DISCUSSION OF POSSIBLE AREAS OF COOPERATION =========================================== 1. NDGF (see slides for comprehensive list of items) . VO application documentation should be improved in some cases . licenced software. A. Heiss: not only coordinated deployment of licenced software is interesting but also the joint procurement (joint purchase of sw licences), this could include databases, batch systems T. Ferrari: capability of deployment of VO licenced software has been often reported as a show stopper by some communities. This is an area worth to be investigated. 2. PIC (see slides for comprehensive list of items) As a starting point it is important to share information on supported VOs and plans. A topic worth to be considered is also joint procurement of hardware. A. Streit: the negotiation part could be joint to increase impact on the providers and get better conditions. N. Geddes: coordinated purchase across Europe is possible. The commision can provide support to this 3. CNAF (see slides for comprehensive list of items) . creation of a RC forum the strengthening of HTC computing in Europe . cloud activities are an area of great interest T. Ferrari: important to cooperate with the Fed Cloud Task Force of EGI, this also means contributing to the refinement of the their current scenarios. . support of new communities can require adaptation of their framework. Developments could be coordinaated/shared in case of communities of common interest. Working groups can be spawned to cover varous areas (e.g. medical imaging) 4. KIT . licencing (top priority) . technology harmonization 5. CYFRONET . resource provisioning (top priority). T. Ferrari: this is quite important for the realization of a HTC infrastructure, currently we lack coordinated capacity allocation and planning. CONCLUSIONS =========== The participants agree to continue the investigations on common topics started at the phone conference. A committee of three people is identified to steer these activities, with the action of identifying a matrix of activities/participants necessary to kickoff activities. M. Morandini, O. Smirnova and G. Merino will work on this and will prepare a proposal of activities by the 12th of December 2011. After an agenda is agreed and the participants are defined, the Terms of Reference can be refined so that the works of the board can start in January 2012.