ESCAPE WP2 fortnightly meeting notes (22 Jan 2020)

Present: Aleem Sarwar, Andrea Ceccanti, Aris Fkiaras, Bastien Gounon, Diego Ciangottini, Gonzalo Merino, Mario Lassnig, Martin, Barisits, Myroslav (RUG), Nadine Neyroud, Pandey, Paul Millar, Paul Musset, Riccardo Di Maria, Rizart Dona, Rohini Joshi, Simone Campana, Stephane Jezequel, Xavier Espinal (notes), Yan Grange

Agenda:

News (Simone)
Preparation of ESCAPE progress meeting (Simone)
Work Packages round table (task leaders)

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ESCAPE progress meeting (26-27 February, Brussels): discussion on the structure of the
- WP2/WP3 session: Simone propose Paul to be the contact for the (sw repositories and catalogues)
  - Paul agreed.
  - Agreed to ask Kay to circulate the draft presentation few days (week?) before the meeting to prepare ourselves.
  - Paul to start the process and contact Aris and Riccardo to get the ball rolling.
- Andrea pointed out that the AAI session is bound to ~1h with contributions of 10’. He alerted that this session might overrun and ask if more time could be allocated. Simone propose to continue/extend the session on the afternoon of the 27th while the General Assembly and Executive Board is taking place.
- WP2/WP5 joint session: we need to define the agenda, it is up to us together with inout from Zheng.
  - We agreed to focus on the integration of the service platform with the datalake, show the main idea and start discussions.
    - RUCIO API might offer all needed functionalities, otherwise need to identify and collect the areas where further development is needed with respect to the RUCIO CLI functionalities and collaborate with RUCIO team to eventually get the needed utilities in place.
    - Agreed to have an architecture+demo discussion (Aris to present RUCIO/API and comparison with RUCIO/CLI).
      - Zheng ask to complement this demo with AAI, so auth/authz is also present in the architecture and exercised (milestone in WP5 is to demonstrate data access)
  - Simone will draft a skeleton agenda for the WP2/WP5 session and circulate it.
ESCAPE Progress Report document to be provided to the this General Assembly, need to reflect the work done and the progress done so far.
- Simone will draft 4 pages document and circulated so can be discussed next week. We will have extraordinary a WP2 meeting next week (29th of January)
Rosie asked the hiring process progress. It seems like the overall hiring is done but not 100%, some job announcements still released this week.
News: Due to changes of duties at CERN and Simone new roles he is stepping down as WP2 leader.
- Simone discussed with CERN management and propose Xavier Espinal to take over as WP2 work package leader after the ESCAPE progress meeting.
  - This need to be formalised at the General Assembly.
- Simone will take the role of Ian Bird in ESCAPE as CERN representative and will continue be involved in WP2.
Task leaders round table:
- T2.1: Xavier shortly presented the current activities (https://indico.in2p3.fr/event/19937/contributions/75972/attachments/56927/75795/T2.1-Update-22012020.pdf)
  - Gonzalo asked whether the XCache software “suite” could be deployed on Kubernettes (K8s)
    - Diego and Riccardo mentioned there are initiatives on this as containeraized methods are used in the several XCache infrastructures.
    - Xavier mentioned also the US initiatives based on Services at the Edge (SLATE) where K8s is used as well.
    - Agreed to present in detail XCache deployment topic and deployment methods in one of the following meetings (maybe after Brussels)
    - Rosie ask about possible contribution of SKA to XCache initiatives and also involve RUCIO/data management. This proposal was very welcomed by Xavier.
      - Xavier reminded the possible tests involving LOFAR and Australian sites that was mentioned late December during Task 2.1 meeting (https://indico.cern.ch/event/864840/)
  - T2.2: Paul presented the planning (https://indico.in2p3.fr/event/19937/contributions/75972/attachments/56927/75787/ESCAPE-T2.2-update.pdf)
    - There was interest on the event happening in Lyon about Storage Events, this event is organised between DESY and IN2P3 to discuss ideas between both labs. This raised the interest of Xavier and Gonzalo that would appreciate a summary (if possible) at one of the next meetings.
  - T2.5: Andrea mentioned the hackathon organised at CERN concerning token based authorization flows for data access. This was mainly for WLCG and ESCAPE. The workshop was extremely productive and very well attended.
Next meeting 29 January at 11:00