Azure meeting Sept 17 2021

EESSI/Azure/SURF sync meeting 20210917

Agenda

• Actions and recap from previous session
• General updates/news (meetings, events, funding applications etc.)
• easy communication via #azure-resources-mgmt in EESSI Slack
• EESSI progress update / Infra in Azure
  • current status on adminstrative setup [Martin]
  • CernVM-FS Stratum 1 for EESSI in Azure (us-east1) [Bob]
  • access to AMD Milan instances? [Kenneth]
  • no costs for egress traffic? [Henk-Jan]
  • leveraging Azure sources in GitHub Actions for EESSI [Alan]
• legal point (raised by Ivar)
• AOB etc.

Attendees

• Alan O'Cais (JSC)
• Bob Dröge (Univ. of Groningen)
• Carsten Schelp (SURF)
• Julian Kreuk (Azure)
• Kenneth Hoste (Ghent University)
• Laura Redfern (Microsoft)
• Martin Brandt (SURF)
• Ivar Janmaat (SURF, team lead Research Cloud)
• Hugo Meiland (Azure)
• Davide Vanzo (Azure)
• Ahmad Hesam (SURF Research Cloud)

Notes

• EESSI status: funding

  • Hoping to hear back from the NeIC proposal soon.

• easy communication via #azure-resources-mgmt in EESSI Slack

• current status on adminstrative setup [Martin]

  • Some issues setting up the subscriptions but they are resolved now
    • Took longer than expected
    • 2 in place, one for Research Cloud (small), one for EESSI
  • 25K budget for now
    • Alarms in place if we get close to this, can be updated
    • Current spend is 20euro but expect this to grow rapidly
  • API key access? [Terje, Bob]
    • Will look into this
    • Some notes on this in Magic Castle

• CernVM-FS Stratum 1 for EESSI in Azure (us-east1) [Bob]

  • Quite small VM, large disk
  • Not using a lot of credits
  • Running in region us-east1, as we already have some European Stratum 1 servers

• access to AMD Milan instances? [Kenneth]

  • Not available on AWS (AFAIK)
  • Just access to one node for build purposes
  • Will need to check what number of cores we can access (curreurrent had limit of 200 cores per VM type)

• costs for egress traffic? [Henk-Jan]

  • Important for the Stratum 1, which will/can generate quite a lot of outgoing traffic to the EESSI clients
  • (details regarding SURFcumulus contract omitted from public notes)

• leveraging Azure sources in GitHub Actions for EESSI [Alan]

  • Would like to do testing of EESSI software inside GitHub Actions
    • Use case is not just by EESSI itself
    • Have created an EESSI GitHub Action that makes EESSI available for CI workflows in GitHub Actions
      • Might get some heavy traffic if it got popular
      • Could limit the action to only listen to the network inside GitHub Actions
    • Can potentially use something like CloudFlare in front of an S3 bucket
  • Also create our own GitHub Action runners for EESSI

• legal point on possible limitations of the usage of the current accounts [Ivar]

  • Are there potential problems with the SURF contract since there are non-Dutch collaborators?
  • Julian: No major concern given the size of the subscription relative to the SURF contract, and the fact that it is for testing and not production.
  • Ivar: When will EESSI be in production?
    • We can't commit to anything there until we have funding

• What's next?

  • Keep chugging along
  • Will raise questions as they arise