GridPP PMB Meeting Minutes 1 ---------------------------- Present: Dave Britton, Nick Brook, Pete Clarke, Tony Doyle, Neil Geddes, John Gordon, Steve Lloyd, Robin Middleton. Agenda ------ 10:30-10:45 Introduction - Tony Doyle 10:45 Roles and Issues Project Leader - Tony Doyle EU DataGrid Liaison - Robin Middleton and Budget Holder CERN liaison - Tony Doyle PP Les Robertson Deputy PL - John Gordon CB Chair - Steve Lloyd Resource Manager - Dave Britton Experiments Board - Nick Brook Technical Liaison - Pete Clarke e-Science Director - Neil Geddes 1:00 lunch 2:00 Agree roles 2:15 Backlog of Issues/Matters arising .... 4:00 Discussion of critical issues ... Mapping roles to outstanding tasks. 1. PMB Membership ----------------- The constitution of the Project Management Board was discussed. The membership of the Board has been constituted as described in the Proposal except for the addition of the Resource Manager as agreed at the first Collaboration Board Meeting and the addition of the DataGrid UK Project Leader. The latter has yet to be approved by the Collaboration Board. The Deputy Chair of the Experiments Board is currently in the process of being elected. The candidates are Roger Barlow and Dave Newbold. Project Leader Tony Doyle Appointed by Collaboration Board Deputy Project Leader John Gordon Appointed by Project Leader Chair of CB Steve Lloyd Ex officio Chair of Technical Board Pete Clarke Appointed by Project Leader Chair of Experiments Board Nick Brook Ex officio Deputy Chair of Experiments Board tbd Ex officio Resource Manager Dave Britton Appointed by Project Leader DataGrid UK Project Leader Robin Middleton Ex officio CERN Liasion Les Robertson Appointed by CERN e-Science Director Neil Geddes Ex officio 2. Roles on the PMB ------------------- The roles of the PMB members were drafted prior to the meeting and were discussed. The roles were refined through discussion, and are to be collected in one area http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~doyle/GridPP/PMB/roles such that the collaboration understand the 3Rs (roles, responsibilities and relationships) within the PMB structure. Input was provided by all PMB members, resulting in updated roles on the web. Various issues arose as the roles were discussed (noted below): Project Leader -------------- (see http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~doyle/GridPP/PMB/GridPP_Sep4.ppt) The role of Project Leader of Project Leader was updated following input from the PMB. The important issues related to other roles were mainly to do with establishing the Technical Board and its relation to DataGrid. Secretarial Help: The PMB agreed that a part time-post should be funded through GridPP to help in coordinating diaries, minute-taking, noting actions, organisation of meetings, preparation of (web) documents and generally helping improve communications from the PMB to the outside world. Tony would define the role, based on external input. DataGrid Liaison ---------------- The role was discussed. The overlap with the TB and PMB function requires further discussion between Robin, Tony and Pete. In Robin's role as Budget Holder, it was noted that we have used 50k in first half year. Estimate 150k for this year + 50k for last year. The final estimates require inspection of the latest travel budget figures. A request should then be made to PPARC. On the DataGrid jobs at RAL - Antony Wilson and Laurence Field have been appointed plus a 3rd has accepted. Robin noted that we can claim 121kEuro over three years from EU funding, with the first priority being support of EU funded posts and second to support DataGrid-related travel for others. CERN Liaison ------------ Tony presented the role of CERN liaison on behalf of Les. There was agreement on the various functions performed in this role. A summary of the role was required for the web. For the CERN posts/PPARC fellowships there will be a standing advert - first review 1st Nov. CERN money was defined as 1/3 of 17M. This is 7M-8M including 1M-2M from core e-Science funding. Deputy Project Leader --------------------- John presented his role to help, deputise and share the duties of Project Leader. In addition, John's role included tasks that were personal to him and not directly the role of Deputy PL so shouldn't be included. These were to: o Build TierA/1 Centre o Integrate Tier1 with Tier2s and with Tier0 through LHC Computing project o Build Links with CLRC e-Science Centre and Grid Support Centre and through them with other RC programmes o Maintain role in the technical programme CB Chair -------- Steve discussed whether to set up Dissemination Board as per proposal. This was included before e-Science Centres were proposed. It may not be useful to have such a committee now but dissemination activity at a high level was still very important. Role changes were noted as: "to ensure that correct mechanisms are in place for GridPP dissemination activities". and "To be the first point of contact for external enquiries." (the new Web pages already have this). Steve will take care of oversight of web pages at the startup of the project. Constitutions and ToR of all Management Structures will be updated from the proposal version in a new (web) document by Steve. Resource Manager ---------------- TO BE ADDED EB Chair -------- Nick presented the role of the chair and deputy of the EB. There would be no pre-defined separate role for each of those posts. Responsibilities would be shared on an ad-hoc arrangement between the chair and deputy. The general feeling it should state more explicitly in the document that the EB should define the experimental requirement and scope of the GridPP project. It was agreed that Pete and Nick should sit down and discuss the relative roles of the EB and TB. In doing so they should come up with a requirement format for the experiments that will allow the TB to assess the technical requirements of the project. e-Science Director ------------------ The role of e-Science Director was discussed. Neil will represent PPARCs interests and wider aims and goals. Where appropriate he will respond to GridPP requests and inform GridPP of wider issues in relation to e-Science, CERN etc. 3. Issues Arising ----------------- Peer Review ----------- It was agreed that Neil should approach a proposed chair for the PRSC. The Chair should be informed about UK activities, but should not be a member of a bidding UK institute. It was agreed that the Chair of the Technical Board should also be on the PRSC (This requires CB approval). GridPP posts are costed at 2.5 years in the proposal - it was agreed they should be funded for 3 years, anticipating further e-Science funding in years 4-6. Funding of Tier-1/A Centre -------------------------- Dave Kelsey's paper explained that CLRC needed financial approval from PPARC before they could start tendering. He suggested a solution of adding the hardware expenditure to the existing PPARC SLA with PPD. This was approved and Neil was actioned to tell Janet Seed to allocate 900K of GridPP allocation to the PPD SLA for this year. This will be an upper limit as some hardware has already been purchased last year but whether this needs to be repaid this year out of the 900K is unclear. 100k approved by CNAL has so far been used to purchase 2Tb of disk, a few PCs and a Gig switch. John will form a small working group to oversee the hardware acquisition. This will contain volunteers from EB plus some technical experts. There was discussion on a number of issues pertinent to the acquisition, eg single or multiple vendor, memory size, maintenance. John to set timescale for tender. Technical Advice Group for Tier-1/A: Roger Jones, Roger Barlow, Dave Newbold, Dave Kelsey, Andrew Sansum, Ian McArther and John Gordon (chair). Recruitment Timetable --------------------- Tony outlined the current issues, focussed on the 3 months up to December. A draft timetable for allocation of GridPP posts (and CERN recruitment timetable) was approved by the PMB, subject to agreement by the EB of the initial deadline. All dates are approximate at this stage. 8th October - EB input deadline 19th October - Technical assessment document 26th October - PMB definition of tasks inc. allocation of posts to Working Groups 1st November - first review of CERN posts 2nd November - Tender document 5-6th November - Collaboration Meeting 30th November- Deadline for submission 7th December - PRSC mtg. 14th December- summary document submitted to PPARC outcomes communicated to groups - second review of CERN posts Second Collaboration Meeting ---------------------------- The PMB approved the proposal to have the 2nd Collaboration Meeting at the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh on 5-6/11/01. The local organiser is Steve Playfer. PMB Meetings ------------ Standard PMB video conference at 1pm on Mondays (H323): Video-conferenced weekly meetings are required during the start-up phase of the project. These will be via H323 using the UCL MCU on Mondays at 1pm. John will report on relevant points from DataGrid weekly meetings. PMB Monthly Meetings: In addition longer 1-day meetings are required ~monthly. The first of these were fixed (subject to input from the deputy EB and Les) as: 27th September - UCL 9th November - RAL