OSG Council Monthly Teleconference

• Teleconference Phone Number: 1-510-665-5437
• Meeting ID: 1111
• Date: September 9th, 2008
• Time: 10:00 AM Pacific Time
• Attending: Tom Hacker (Purdue), Brad Abbott (DZero), Ann Chervenak (ISI/CDIGS), Scott McCauley? (Indiana University), Dick Greenwood (DOSAR), Jerome Lauret (STAR), Paul Avery (Council Co-Chair), Kent Blackburn (Council Co-Chair)

Agenda/Minutes

Status Report from the OSG Executive Director
(Traveling and may not be available)

Kent asked that council review the OSG Comunications Strategic Plan that Anne Heavey prepared on December 26, 2007 and provide feedback to the exective team. The Communications Plan is in the link above.

Status Report from the OSG Project Manager
(Traveling and will not be available)

No report this month other than those found in Items 9 and 10 of the Executive Director's Report above.

NSF Program Solicitation NSF 08-573
(High Performance Computing System Acquisition: Towards Petascale Computing Environment for Science and Engineering)

Kent reported that the NSF had communicated with OSG regarding this solicitation and that Ruth was working with Purdue for formulate a planned response. Tom reported that Gary Bertoline, the Purdue TeraGrid? PI was planning to contact Ruth regarding this solicitation.

Expanding Membership of the Science Advisory Group (SAG)

Paul reported that we are expanding the representation of the SAG by 3 or 4 members to have greater diversity in its representation. The Council has identified 4 or 5 new names. Paul is awaiting the letter used by Bill Kramer to originally build the SAG for updating and distribution to the new members. Paul has contacted 3 of the 4 current members, the fourth is now in the private sector and difficult to reach. We expect to have a SAG meeting in late October or early November.

Formation of OSG Council Organization Subcommittee

Kent reminded everyone of the Council's decision at the face-to-face meeting to integrate/postpone some aspect of the "At-Large VO Subcommittee" recommendations into the OSG Council Organization Subcommittee scope. Kent would like to have the kick-off meeting for this subcommittee next week at the OSG Council Telecon timeslot (Tuesday at 10AM). Kent reminded everyone of the face-to-face decision to have Shaowen Wang represent the "At-Large VOs" on this subcommittee. Jerome also would like to be part of this subcommittee and is available for the Tuesday 10AM Pacific timeslot next week. Scott is interested in this but his schedule prevents him from being available. Kent will send out logistics for the telecon and welcomes any Council Members to participate.

Establishing a "Value" Model for the OSG (continuation of Face-to-Face discussion)

No further suggestions were presented.

Round-Table VO Reports and Issues - Ongoing Goals/Milestones

Tom: Things are going well, may approach OSG for some proposal development needs in the near future. Mostly gearing up for LHC needs.

Brad: DZero report from Ruth pretty much captures current situation - looking good!

Ann: CDIGS Meeting with OSG is coming up soon. Will have more to report after the meeting.

Scott: Gearing up for LHC. Opening up a new position in Rob Quick's group.

Dick: Most of DOSAR members are also affiliated with ATLAS and CMS. LHC turn-on is a focus.

Jerome: No new waves of simulation for a couple of months that will require use of OSG.

Paul: Nothing from Paul.

Kent: Only that LIGO is seeing some improvements in the running of Einstein@Home jobs on the OSG. The reasons are not clearly understood, but there are some suggestive emails. Note that Einstein@Home is using WS-Gram.

AOB

Jerome asked if there has been any OSG plans for Virtual Machines. His experiences have shown that VMs make it much easier to migrate complex workflows onto a service provider. This may be a technology that has merit to several VOs within the OSG. Kent commented that in LIGO VMs get discussed from time to time, but that they haven't made it onto any LIGO work plan as of yet. There was no one on the call that has attended a recent Blueprint meeting to comment if this has been raised there. We can discuss again next month if representation permits.

-- KentBlackburn - 05 Sep 2008