The document discusses observations from an operations perspective on information systems. It notes that bootstrapping systems and ensuring consistency across distributed resources is challenging. Simplifying configurations and emphasizing relationships between systems can help. Structure is important for attributes and how systems relate. Provenance or the ability to trace information back to its source is also key, to avoid issues from inconsistent or untraceable data. Overall it promotes designing grids and information systems with traceability, consistency, and understand relationships between components to help operations.

1. Information Systems
from an operational perspective
James Casey, CERN
EGEE’09 Conference, Barcelona

3. • 4 observations from an operations guy
• Bootstrapping
• We’re not all islands
• Structure matters
• Provenance

4. Bootstrapping

5. GOCDB has a site list ...
... which feeds a top level BDII ...
... which is used to configure SAM ...
... which is used to test sites ...
... from which Gridview calculates status ...
... from which FCR removes sites from VO
BDIIs !

6. How we configure our grids

7. How can we make this simpler ?

8. We’re not all islands

10. Inconsistencies kill
operations

12. Roles and responsibilities

13. Structure matters

14. • Attributes are very important for
middleware
• “Exactly what do you do and how are
you doing now”
• Relationships are very important for
operations
• “Who are you related to. What groups
do you belong to”

15. Everyone’s relationships
are different

16. Infrastructures ‘own’
resources
VOs ‘name’ resources

17. Aggregate topology provider

18. More connections are better

19. Provenance

20. Who really published this data and should
they have ?
Canonical Example: Single LFC for a VO,
but anyone can publish one
==> Operational problems ;(

21. How do we allow anyone to publish but
allow the act of publication to be ‘signed off’
by another entity?

22. What is at the Grid ?

23. What should be on the
grid ?

24. Proposal :
What should be on the
grid ?

25. Summary :
• Structure and relationships
• Consistency
• Single (traceable) source of information
• Allow VO/Projects/ops to annotate
• Provenance
• Things we can write tests against

26. Make your grumpy ops guy happy

27. Thank you.

28. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/916142/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spyderracer393/474935005/in/
pool-661546@N22
http://www.flickr.com/photos/that_james/496767790/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigdogwoody2000/2389109926/