The Credibility Gap 11Oct07 11Oct2007 Credibility Gap D

The Credibility Gap 11/Oct/07 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Grid. PP 2 Project. Map 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Grid. PP 2+ Deliverables • These have been defined. • Not yet in the Grid. PP 2 Project Map (no space) • Will be monitored separately and/or in Grid. PP 3 Project Map 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Grid. PP 3 Project Map 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Grid. PP 3 Project Map • Needs to cover period up to and including data taking • Will define milestones and metrics: – – – Survey of existing metrics (time to collect, relevance for Grid. PP 3) Aim to align with milestones and metrics reported to WLCG and EGEE, experiment dashboard, Mo. U commitments Mix of bottom up and top down • Plan to define detailed milestones for first year, then revisit in a year’s time • Experiments as driving force for Grid service – at the top of the project map 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Risk Register CASTOR “Credibility Gap” 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Credibility Gap: Definition • Refers to the lack of funding for the support of experiment applications running on the Grid. • We believe that this “fell between two stools”: Grid. PP 3 is about the deployment and support of Infrastructure; the Rolling Grants focused on the exploitation of physics, assuming the tools were in place. • We identify this as a Gap in the overall UK strategy to capitalise on all the investment in LHC hardware and computing. • Danger is that experiment’s use of the Grid will be inefficient and/or labour intensive resulting in UK physicists becoming uncompetitive. 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Grid. PP Actions After raising this at the last Oversight Committee Meeting, and following the advice received, Grid. PP took the following actions to address the Credibility Gap: 1) Identified funds available and potentially could be made available within the existing Grid. PP 2 funding envelope. 2) Consulted with ATLAS, CMS and LHCb about how best to address the problem. 3) Formulated a detailed plan for Grid. PP 3, which included the above funds, and submitted to STFC. 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Grid. PP 2 Funds £ 1268 k funding identified, arising from: £ 316 k (EGEE funding for the four Tier-2 coordinators). £ 94 k not yet spent on Grid. PP 2 Tier-2 hardware line. £ 64 k accrued due to vacant staff posts. £ 40 k not yet spent on the Grid. PP 2 consumables line. £ 22 k underspend on Tier-1 hardware in FY 06. £ 134 k saved on the total travel budget due to EU rebates. £ 598 K documented in the previous Oversight Committee document. 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Plan Proposed 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

STFC Response We would not be permitted to carry forward the £ 1. 27 m from Grid. PP 2. After considerable iteration it was agreed that a subset of the proposed posts could be funded from the Grid. PP 3 Working Allowance Experiment support posts reduced from 1. 5 to 1. 0 FTE for each of the three experiments. Some discretion would be applied in the use of the Grid. PP 3 contingency. 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Grid. PP Position Grid. PP notes that: 1) The 1. 5 FTE proposed to support the experiment applications was already subminimal and reducing this compounds the problem. 2) The working allowance was approved to address concerns about the service levels at the Tier-1 and Tier-2 s. Pre-spending this elsewhere introduces risk. 3) Grid. PP 2 funds were peer review approved. They were part of the consideration when deciding on the level of the Grid. PP 3 award. At least half the savings were documented prior to the finalisation of the Grid. PP 3 award. 4) The additional contributions to the savings were largely made through obtaining EU funding and careful and responsive management (to delays in the LHC schedule, for example, and anticipation of difficult times ahead). 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Experiment’s View ATLAS notes that their recovery plans depended on monies from both Grid. PP and ATLAS-UK. The latter funds are on hold pending clarification of the Grid. PP situation. The timing of all this is bad. CMS are deeply concerned about the shortfall and feel there is significant risk to their operations. They are particularly concerned, being smaller than ATLAS, that they are living on “borrowed time” as several key academics keeping the computing side afloat will shortly have to return to other duties with no obvious substitutes available. More generally, CMS perceive a substantial risk that the RAL Tier-1 will not be integrated into any of the Experiment’s international computing systems at the application level. LHCb is worried about their ability to meet the full demands of their computing model in 2008 in the face of solving the manpower issue at this late stage. Although some additional funds (Imperial) have been found for Ganga, the high priority post at the Tier-1 need to be resolved. 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton

Summary Grid. PP has responded to concerns about the shortfall of application support effort by identifying funding within the Grid. PP 2 envelope to fund 1. 5 FTE per experiment. STFC has not approved this; instead proposes that the Grid. PP 3 working allowance fund 1. 0 FTE per experiment. Grid. PP and the Experiments do not feel this is wise and/or sufficient. The Credibility Gap has not been completely closed. 11/Oct/2007 Credibility Gap D. Britton