On 2–3 April the openlab annual Board of Sponsors took place at CERN. Rolf Heuer, CERN director-general, opened this Board and officially launched the third phase of CERN openlab. During his introductory speech, he stressed the importance of collaborating with industry and building closer relationships with other key institutes as well as the European Commission. The Board was an opportunity for partner companies (HP, Intel, Oracle, Siemens), contributors (EDS – an HP company) and CERN to present the key achievements obtained during openlab-II and the expectations for openlab-III.
openlab history
Each phase of CERN openlab corresponds to a three-year period. In openlab-I (2003–2005) the focus was on the development of an advanced prototype called opencluster. CERN openlab-II (2006–2008) addressed a range of domains from platforms, databases and Grid to security and networking, with HP, Intel and Oracle as partners and EDS as a contributor. Disseminating the expertise and knowledge has also been a key focus. Regular training sessions took place throughout this period, including openlab contributions to the CERN School of Computing. The activities carried out during the last year of phase II are presented in the openlab annual report, which was published in June, and is available from the website (www.cern.ch/openlab).
openlab-III
With the start of the third phase, new challenging projects have been initiated with the partners. The projects are within four Competence Centres (CCs):
• Automation and Controls CC (ACCC): Through the ACCC, CERN, Siemens and ETM Professional Control (a subsidiary of Siemens) are collaborating on security, as well as the move of automation tools towards software engineering and handling of large environments.
• Database CC (DCC): In partnership with Oracle, the DCC focuses on items, such as data distribution and replication, monitoring and infrastructure management, highly available database services, application design, as well as automatic failover and standby databases.
• Networking CC (NCC): One focus of the NCC is a project launched by CERN and HP ProCurve to understand the behaviour of large computer networks (10,000+ nodes) in high-performance computing or large campus installations. Another activity is the Grid Monitoring and Messaging Projects in collaboration with EDS.
• Platform CC (PCC): The PCC project focuses on the PC-based computing hardware and the related software. In collaboration with Intel, it addresses important fields such as thermal optimization, application tuning and benchmarking. It also has a strong emphasis on teaching.
During the third phase, the team will not only capitalize on and extend the successful work carried out in openlab-II, but also tackle new crucial areas. Additional team members have recently joined and the structure is now in place to collaborate and work on bringing these projects to fruition.
The openlab team
The openlab team consists of three complementary groups: the young engineers hired by CERN and funded by the partners (21 people over the past eight years), technical experts from partner companies involved in the openlab projects, and CERN management and technical experts working partly or fully on the joint activities.
The people involved are not concentrated in a single group but span multiple units. In the IT Department the CS (Communication Systems), DES (Databases and Engineering Services), DI (Departmental Infrastructure), DM (Data Management), GD (Grid Deployment), GS (Grid Support) and IS (Internet Services) groups host openlab activities, as does the ICE (Industrial Controls and Electronics) group in the EN (Engineering) Department, since the arrival of Siemens as an openlab partner (see CNL November 2008, p2).
The distributed team structure also enables close collaboration with computing experts in the LHC experiments, as well as with engineers and scientists from the various openlab partners who contribute greatly to these activities. In addition, significant contributions are made by the students participating in the CERN openlab Summer Student Programme; both directly to the openlab activities and more widely to WLCG, EGEE and other Grid and CERN-related activities within the IT Department.
Since the inception of openlab, more than 100 young computer scientists have participated. This summer the programme will be welcoming 14 students of 11 different nationalities.
Useful link
CERN openlab website: www.cern.ch/openlab