EGEE Technical Coordination The Technical Coordination Group (TCG)

1. EGEE Technical CoordinationThe Technical Coordination Group (TCG) Erwin Laure EGEE Technical Director 1st EGEE User Forum March 1-3 2006

2. Overview • The EGEE-II proposal defines a Technical Coordination Group (TCG): The TCG brings together the technical activities within the project in order to ensure the oversight and coordination of the technical direction of the project, and to ensure that the technical work progresses according to plan. • Basically coordinating the work of SA1, SA2, SA3, NA4, and JRA1 • Membership from all these activities but still remain a “small” team • Additional experts will join based on the topic of discussion • Working groups will be spawn off to solve specific problems • Focus on practical short term solutions • Long term projects will be sourced out to middleware providers • The group defines the technical direction of EGEE • Not just a discussion forum! • Decisions taken by the group must be honoured by the affected activities 1st EGEE User Forum

3. Membership • “Small” team (~10 persons) in order to work efficiently • Hence membership is closed • All communities are represented • Members must be experts in their respective area and have an overview of the whole system • Members must devote a consistent amount of their time over the whole duration of the project on the group • Member competences needed in • Applications (from the major application domains, in particular the task force leaders) • Grid deployment and operation • Middleware (architecture) and integration • Grid Security • Site view (running services, understanding of fabrics, networking issues and costs) • Application support: individuals who have worked closely with the applications groups and who have good contacts with them 1st EGEE User Forum

4. TCG SA1 JRA1 NA4 Site rep Security TF SA3 SA3 SA2 SA3 TCG Composition • Lead by Technical Director • Escalation path to PEB • Progress reported to PMB aspart of the quarterly technical report • Interactions with: • User communities (NA4) • Middleware providers (SA3, JRA1) • Infrastructure (SA1) • Through members: • Related projects • Standardization efforts 1st EGEE User Forum

5. TCG Workflow • The TCG gathers input from the stakeholders (issues, problems, functionality request, changes to existing services, etc.) and prioritizes it. • The list of prioritized requirements is used by SA3, in discussion with the TCG, to determine how the problems may be addressed. This might be looking for new services from middleware providers, commissioning fixes, changes, etc. • SA3 returns this proposal to the TCG for discussion and eventual agreement. • The TCG then, together with the activity leaders, proposes short term work plans for the relevant activities. • The TCG will follow up on the progress of these plans and adapt them. 1st EGEE User Forum

6. First Experiences • Operational since November 9, 2005 • (Almost) weekly meetings since then • 1.5 hour phone conferences • Extended (4 hour) video conference meetings once a month • Started with definition of contents of gLite 3.0 • gLite 3.0 now frozen and passed to the pre-production service • Discuss application requirements • Better mutual understanding • JRA1 and SA3 provided proposals how to address these • Expected to lead to definition of gLite 3.1 and JRA1 workplan • All information available on the TCG webpage: http://egee-intranet.web.cern.ch/egee-intranet/NA1/TCG/tcg.htm 1st EGEE User Forum

7. Example: prioritization process 1st EGEE User Forum

8. Working Groups • 4 Working Groups created so far: • Medical Data Management (MDM) • Short Deadline Jobs (SDJ) • Message Passing (MPI) • Job Priorities (JP) • WG membership open – not confined to TCG • Brings together experts from different applications, projects, etc. • WGs report to TCG • WGs are expected to provide concrete results • Requirements, • Proposals for new mw components, • Proposals for changes in mw components • Deployment, configuration instructions • To contribute: • Contact the WG leader 1st EGEE User Forum

9. TCG Program of Work • Issues the TCG is going to address: • Definition of contents of gLite 3.1 • squid caches • Installation/configuration methods • Application software installation • Application benchmarks • gLite and GT4 • job statistics, accounting etc. • This list is open ended and changes regularly • All TCG members can provide input to this list 1st EGEE User Forum

10. Summary • TCG has started to work efficiently • All communities are represented • First WGs are operating • More WGs expected (membership open to include experts and advanced users from relevant communities) • First results: definition of gLite 3.0 contents • Next major milestone will be the definition of gLite 3.1 contents • Plan to integrate an Industry Task Force (ITF) to foster collaboration with industry • How to contribute • Get in touch with the WG leader (existing working groups) • Subscribe to WG mailing list • The default entry point for users of new communities is your NA4 representatives in the TCG (Cal Loomis and Massimo Lamanna) • All TCG documents are public http://egee-intranet.web.cern.ch/egee-intranet/NA1/TCG/tcg.htm 1st EGEE User Forum