Alert.png The wiki is deprecated and due to be decommissioned by the end of September 2022.
The content is being migrated to other supports, new updates will be ignored and lost.
If needed you can get in touch with EGI SDIS team using operations @ egi.eu.

Difference between revisions of "TSA2.5 Deployed Middleware Support Unit"

From EGIWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Line 141: Line 141:
* 3rd line support '''reassign back''' the ticket to DMSU. A comment pointing to appropriate documentation or giving justification why this is a trivial issue must be given in this case.  
* 3rd line support '''reassign back''' the ticket to DMSU. A comment pointing to appropriate documentation or giving justification why this is a trivial issue must be given in this case.  
* this mechanism will be used as a metric of DMSU failures, and checked thoroughly, therefore it should not be abused.
* this mechanism will be used as a metric of DMSU failures, and checked thoroughly, therefore it should not be abused.
When the user does not react on a raised question, she is typically reminded weekly, on the DMSU meetings. If there is '''no reaction''' for more than '''one month''', the ticket is closed as ''unsolved''.


== Ticket priorities ==
== Ticket priorities ==

Revision as of 13:28, 24 January 2012

TPM cheat sheet

TPM DMSU Cheat Sheet
Comp\Flavor CESNET JUELICH INFN BADW-LRZ NDGF
ARC *
BDII *
CREAM *
dCache *
DGAS *
DPM *
FTS *
GLOBUS *
Gridsite *
LB *
LFC *
MyProxy *
SGAS *
STORM *
UNICORE *
VOMS * *
WMS * *

People working for DMSU

The DMSU people are categorized into two groups:

  • Assigners, i.e. the prime technical contact person pr. partner and also the one to conduct the initial assignment of tickets following the TPM assignment
  • Resolvers, extra experts at each partners to which the assigner can delegate tasks when needed either due to technical reasons or due to overload of one of the other staff members.

The lost of people, with a short list of expertise areas relevant for DMSU follow here:

CESNET

Assigner: Aleš Křenek, ljocha at ics dot muni dot cz
EGI SSO login: ljocha
Expertise: LB, DPM

Resolvers:

  • Zdeněk Salvet, salvet at ics dot muni dot cz (LB, WMS, MyProxy)
  • Zdeněk Šustr, sustr4 at cesnet dot cz (LB, WMS)
  • Daniel Kouřil, kouril at ics dot muni dot cz (Gridsite, MyProxy, VOMS and security in general)

JUELICH

Assigners: Mathilde Romberg (romberg)

Expertise: UNICORE

Resolvers:

  • Jason Milad Daivandy

INFN

Assigner: Alessandro Paolini (alessandro.paolini at cnaf.infn.it)
EGI SSO login: apaolini
Expertise: CREAM, LFC, VOMS

Resolvers:

  • Andrea Cristofori (andrea.cristofori at cnaf.infn.it)(DGAS,WMS)
  • David Rebatto (david.rebatto at mi.infn.it)(CREAM)
  • Sara Bertocco (sara.bertocco at pd.infn.it) (CREAM, WMS)
  • Sergio Traldi (sergio.traldi at pd.infn.it)(CREAM, WMS)
  • Elisabetta Ronchieri (elisabetta.ronchieri at cnaf.infn.it) (STORM)
  • Stefano Dal Pra (stefano.dalpra at cnaf.infn.it)(STORM)
  • Paolo Veronesi (paolo.veronesi at cnaf.infn.it) (BDII, FTS)

BADW-LRZ

Assigner: Emmanouil Paisios
EGI SSO login: epaisios
Expertise: Globus

Resolvers:

  • None (Emmanouil is responsible for everything here)

NDGF

Assigner: Jens Larsson
EGI SSO login: jens
Expertise: ARC, dCache

Resolvers:

  • Gerd Behrmann (dCache)
  • Daniel Johansson (ARC)
  • Henrik Thostrup (SGAS, ARC)

Ticket handling procedure

The purpose of DMSU work is twofold: to find solution to problems problems which do not require changes in code, documentation, ... (whatever is released by the TP), and to provide thorough analysis, yielding well-specified bug report otherwise.

The following ticket handling guidelines contribute to achieving these goals:

  • The first mandatory step of DMSU work on a ticket is understanding what is the reason of the reported problem. The outcome of the analysis is documented with the ticket, preferably as a response to the user. The analysis may or may not include thorough reproduction of the problem; it is left to common sense.
  • During the analysis DMSU also assesses the priority of the ticket (see bellow) and adjusts Type of problem and Ticket category fields eventually.
  • Typically, the analysis involves communication with the users. DMSU sets ticket state to Waiting-for-reply whenever expecting feedback by the user. It is foreseen GGUS will implement automatic switch to In-progress when the user answers.
  • DMSU expertise should cover most tickets. For remaining tough issues developers (i.e. the 3rd line support) can be involved. However, the control on the ticket is still kept within DMSU, i.e. the ticket is not reassigned to another support unit.
  • If solution of the problem does not induce changes in code, documentation, default configuration etc., i.e. release of anything by the technology provider, DMSU closes the ticket.
  • Otherwise, the ticket is reassigned to the appropriate 3rd line support unit. In this case, the most recent comment (i.e. on reassignment) should contain a brief summary of the DMSU analysis on the ticket, pointing to what is wrong exactly, how to reproduce the problem etc., so that 3rd line supporters don't have to gather all information from the ticket correspondence, which tends to be rather long.

A special case are tickets that were solved in DMSU but they require comment by th 3rd line, i.e. to confirm feasibility of the solution. Those tickets should be closed in DMSU just with a comment indicating the 3rd line was contacted, and the 3rd line approached by other means. The standard GGUS workflow must not be used for this communication, in order to keep the statistics clean, mostly.

If a ticket is wrongly assigned to 3rd line support, i.e. the problem is quite simple and it should have been solved by DMSU preferably, then:

  • 3rd line support reassign back the ticket to DMSU. A comment pointing to appropriate documentation or giving justification why this is a trivial issue must be given in this case.
  • this mechanism will be used as a metric of DMSU failures, and checked thoroughly, therefore it should not be abused.

When the user does not react on a raised question, she is typically reminded weekly, on the DMSU meetings. If there is no reaction for more than one month, the ticket is closed as unsolved.

Ticket priorities

Followup of tickets with 3rd line support units

DMSU shifts

The main purpose of DMSU shift is no surprise: keep the things running, not to leave an important issue without fast reaction etc.

The shifts are held by groups of people with expertise on different middleware stacks. However, due to the prevailing gLite-related traffic in DMSU only gLite shifts are formally organized currently, the other stacks are handled on the best effort basis.

The specific duties of the person on shift are:

  • to follow incoming emails from GGUS, being able to react within approx. 2 hours in normal working hours
  • to identify "top priority" and "very urgent" issues, not only by the priority set by the submitter but also by using common sense, and to make sure an appropriate expert starts looking into the issue; this includes assigning the ticket to a specific person
  • to keep checking that there is reasonable response time, namely as a reaction to further submitter's correspondence; it should be almost immediate on "top priority", and we can probably afford upto 1 week for "less urgent"

One person holds the shift for one week, the duty is passed to the other on Monday afternoon.

Shift schedule

Dec 5 Zdeněk Salvet
Dec 12 INFN
Dec 19 Aleš Křenek
Dec 26 best effort
Jan 2 Aleš Křenek
Jan 9 Alessandro Paolini
Jan 16 Zdeněk Salvet
Jan 23 Sergio Traldi
Jan 30 Aleš Křenek

DMSU Digests

Brief description and indexing of issues solved within DMSU that are likely to have broader impact on EGI Operations.

Maintained on separate page Middleware_issues_and_solutions

Operations Documentation

DMSU contributes to maintenance of EGI Operations_Manuals, in particular


Systems available for DMSU

In order to debug issues and design workaround availability to some systems is needed. Below is a list of systems available for the DMSU staff pr partner.

CESNET

prague_cesnet_lcg2

  • # nodes/cores: 20/80
  • OS: SL 5.2
  • Batch system: PBSPro
  • Grid m/w: gLite 3.1
  • EA Site: Y

https://goc.gridops.org/site/list?id=48

{floi1,floi2}.egee.cesnet.cz

Virtual machines for experimental services, can be scratched and reinstalled as required.

  • # nodes/cores: 2/2
  • OS: SL 5.3 x86_64
  • Batch system: N/A
  • Scheduler: N/A
  • Grid m/w and flavour: LB 2.0 (of gLite 3.2)
  • EA Site: N

JUELICH

INFN

# nodes/cores: a) 4/8 b) 3/6
OS: a) SL4 x86_32 b) SL5 x86_64
Batch system: torque/pbs
Scheduler: maui
Grid m/w and flavour: a) INFNGRID 3.1 (based on gLite 3.1) b) INFNGRID 3.2 (based on gLite 3.2)
EA Site: Y (for STORM service) https://goc.gridops.org/site/list?id=95

BADW-LRZ

Linux Cluster

   * Nodes/Cores: 938/5532
   * OS: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
   * Batch System/Scheduler: SGE 6.2
   * Globus 4.0.7
   * EA Site: N

NDGF

Smokerings

   * Nodes/Cores: 66/528
   * CentOS 5.7
   * Torque (to be replaced by SLURM)
   * MOAB (to be replaced by SLURM)
   * ARC 1.1
   * EA Site
   * https://goc.gridops.org/node/list?id=7055071

Obsolete stuff

Not used anymore but keeping the old links here.

Relevant tickets

Relevant tickets passed through DMSU and assigned to other support units are gathered here

Meetings