APEL/Storage
Storage accounting in APEL is based on the StAR (Storage Accounting Record) developed by EMI in conjuction with the OGF Usage Record Work Group (UR-WG). The format is documented here.
EMI delivered StAR solutions for dcache and DPM in EMI-3. In both cases the storage service queries its database at a site and extracts data to populate StAR usage records. The site then uses SSM as a transport method to send the StAR records across the EGI Messaging Service to APEL's central accounting repository.
Deployment Instructions
Get the accounting script
Follow the link for your product.
DPM - you need to run 1.8.7 or higher. For earlier releases it can be found here http://svnweb.cern.ch/world/wsvn/lcgdm/lcg-dm/trunk/scripts/StAR-accounting/star-accounting.py
On the command line which runs the script, add --site="your-GOCDB-sitename"
Get the SSM software
The APEL SSM software can be installed from the yum repo or by downloading an rpm or tarball. See here for more information: SSM
Get authorised
While storage accounting publishing is still in test mode please send the host certificate DN to apel-admins@stfc.ac.uk and ask them to authorise you for storage publishing.
Configure SSM
To configure apel-ssm for sending acounting records we have to edit the file /etc/apel/sender.cfg, and modify some parameters:
- In the [broker] section, you need:
network: PROD
and not:
network: TEST-NWOB
as for initial testing. Also set:
use_ssl: false
- In the [certificates] section, you need to set the host certificate to be used by the sender:
certificate: /path/to/your/host/certificate
key: /path/to/your/key
- In the [messaging] section, you need:
destination: /queue/global.accounting.test.storage.central
- as described here: https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/APEL/SSM2Configuration.
path:
set to the directory to which the StAR records are written by your storage software.
dcache and dpm should send one StAR record per VO. Please set up a cron to run once per day.
Configure GOCDB
When storage accounting moves to the production message broker network then you will need to add a servicetype to GOCDB for the host which runs SSM. The servicetype has not yet been defined but it will require the host certificate DN.
Running the Accounting Software
Create a cron job to run your accounting script followed by the SSM sender. We recommend that you send storage accounting data once per day. There will be a delay of up to 24 hours before you see the data you have sent in the Accounting Portal.