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RAL Tier1/A Report HepSysMan - July 2004 Martin Bly / Andrew Sansum

RAL Tier1/A Report HepSysMan - July 2004 Martin Bly / Andrew Sansum. Overview. Hardware Network Experiences / Challenges Management issues. Tier1 in GRIDPP2 (2004-2007).

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RAL Tier1/A Report HepSysMan - July 2004 Martin Bly / Andrew Sansum

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  1. RAL Tier1/A Report HepSysMan - July 2004 Martin Bly / Andrew Sansum

  2. Overview • Hardware • Network • Experiences / Challenges • Management issues

  3. Tier1 in GRIDPP2 (2004-2007) • The Tier-1 Centre will provide GRIDPP2 with a large computing resource of a scale and quality that can be categorised as an LCG Regional Computing Centre • January 2004 – GRIDPP2 confirm RAL to be host for Tier1 Service • GRIDPP2 to commence September 2004 • Tier1 Hardware budget: • £2.3M over 3 years • Staff • Increase from 12.1 to 16.5 by September

  4. Current Tier1 Hardware • CPU • 350 dual Processor Intel – PIII and Xeon servers mainly rack mounts • About 400KSI2K • RedHat 7.3 • P2/450 tower units decommissioned April 04 • RH72 and Solaris batch services to be phased out this year • Disk Service – mainly “standard” configuration • Dual Processor Server • Dual channel SCSI interconnect • External IDE/SCSI RAID arrays (Accusys and Infortrend) • ATA drives (mainly Maxtor) • About 80TB disk • Cheap and (fairly) cheerful • Tape Service • STK Powderhorn 9310 silo with 8 9940B drives

  5. New Hardware • 256 x dual Xeon HT/2800GHz@533MHz • 2GB RAM (32 with 4GB RAM), 120GB HDD, 1Gb NIC: 8 racks. • 20 disk servers with two 4TB IDE/SCSI arrays: 5 racks • Infortrend EonStore A16U-G1A units, each with 16 x WD 250GB SATA HDD – 4TB/array raw capacity • Servers: dual Xeon HT/2800@533MHz, 2GB RAM, dual 120GB SATA system disks, dual 1Gb/s NIC • 160Tb raw, ~140TB available (RAID5) • Delivered June 15th, now running commissioning tests

  6. Next Procurement • Need in production by January 2005 • Original schedule of December delivery seems late • Will have to start very soon • Less chance for testing / new technology • Exact proportions not agreed, but … • 400 KSI2K (300-400 CPUs) • 160TB disk • 120TB tape?? • Network infrastructure? • Core servers (H/A??) • RedHat? • Long range plan needs reviewing – also need long range experiment requirements so as to plan environment updates.

  7. CPU Capacity

  8. Tier1 Disk Capacity (TB)

  9. High Impact Systems • Looking at replacement hardware for high impact systems: • /home/csf, /rutherford file systems • Mysql servers • AFS cell • Front end / UI hosts • Data movers • NIS master, Mail server • Replacing mix of Solaris, Tru64 Unix and AIX servers with Linux – consolidation of expertise • Migrate AFS to OpenAFS and then K5.

  10. Production VLAN Site Routable Network Test VLAN Network Superjanet Test network (eg MBNG) Firewall Rest of Site Site Router Server Production Subnet Test Subnet Servers Workers Workers Servers

  11. Production VLAN Test VLAN Network SuperJanet Test network (eg MBNG) Firewall Rest of Site Site Router Server Tier1 Network Workers Servers Servers Workers

  12. UKlight • Connection to RAL in September • Funded to end 2005 after which probably merges with SuperJanet 5 • 2.5Gb/s now  10Gb/s from 2006 • Effectively dedicated light path to CERN • Probably not for Tier1 production but suitable for LCG Data challenges etc, building experience for SuperJanet upgrade. • UKLight -> Starlight

  13. Forthcoming Challenges • Simplify service – less “duplication” • Improve storage management • Deploy new Fabric Management • RedHat Enterprise 3 upgrade • Network upgrade/reconfigure???? • Another procurement/install • Meet challenge of LCG – professionalism • LCG Data Challenges • …

  14. Clean up Spaghetti Diagram • How to phase out “Classic” service .. • Simplify Interfaces: Less GRIDS “More is not always better”

  15. ATA and SATA drives External RAID arrays SCSI interconnect Ext2 file system Linux O/S NFS/Xrootd/http/gridftp/bbftp/srb/…. NO SAN No management layer NO HSM 2.5% failure per annum - OK Good architecture, choose well Surprisingly unreliable: change OK – but need journal: XFS? Move to Enterprise 3 Must have SRM Need SAN (Fibre or iSCSI …) Need virtualisation/DCACHE.. ???? Storage: Plus and Minus

  16. Benchmarking • Work by George Prassas on various systems including a 3ware/SATA RAID5 system. • Tuning gains extra performance on RH variants • Performance of RHEL3 NFS servers and disk I/O not special despite tuning, c/w RH73 • Considering buying SPEC suite to benchmark everything.

  17. Fabric Management • Currently run: • Kickstart – cascading config files, implementing PXE • SURE exception monitoring • Automate – automatic interventions • Running out of steam with old systems … • “Only” 800 systems – but many, many flavours • Evaluating Quator – no obvious alternatives – probably deploy • Less convinced by Lemon – bit early – running Nagios in parallel

  18. Yum / Yumit • Kickstart scripts now use Yum to bootstrap systems to latest updates • Post-install config now uses Yum wherever possible for local additions • Yumit: • Nodes use Yum to check their status very night and report to central database • Web interface to show farm status • Easy to see which nodes need updating. • Machine ownership tagging, port monitoring project

  19. Futures • Storage Architectures • iSCSI, Fibre, dCache • Need to be more sophisticated to allow reallocation of available space • CPUs • Xeon, Opteron, Itanium, Intel 64bit x86 architecture • Network • Higher speed interconnect, iSCSI

  20. Conclusions • After several years of relative stability must start re-engineering many Tier1 components. • Must start to rationalise – support limited set of interfaces, operating systems, testbeds … simplify so we can do less better • LCG becoming a big driver • Service commitments • Increase resilience and availability • Data challenges and move to steady state • Major reality check in 2007!

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