Performance Based Management

Self-Assessment Report

October 2002

Computer Information

Computer Information Resource Management

Introduction/Background

Date of last assessment: October 2001

 Departmental Overview

 Laboratory Mission

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is dedicated to experimental and theoretical research in elementary particle physics and in those fields that make use of its synchrotron radiation facilities, including biology, chemistry, geology, material science and electrical engineering. This includes the development of new techniques in particle acceleration and detection, and of synchrotron radiation sources and associated instrumentation. The Center is operated as a national user facility for the Department of Energy by Stanford University.

Organizational Mission

The Computer Information Resource Management functional area is responsible for coordinating Information Management activities within the Laboratory. This coordination effort includes encouragement of information standards to ensure broad availability of information resources, of computer and systems procurements that have Laboratory support, and are part of Laboratory wide information planning practices.

The Computer Information Resource Management functional area self-assessment is based on, and measured against, performance objectives and standards as reflected in the SLAC contract that were defined by SLAC managers and DOE points of contact in order to address customer satisfaction, cost efficiency, and contract compliance.

Identification of Self-Assessment Report Staff

Names, titles, affiliations of participants

Robert Cowles, Computer Security Officer

Richard Mount, Director of SLAC Computing Services (SCS)

Scope of Self-Assessment

The BaBar program has been extremely productive during FY02.  Luminosity in PEP II has continued to increase, reaching over 150% of design luminosity.  By virtue of this luminosity, BaBar has recorded nearly a petabyte of data.  In order to accommodate this plethora of data, SLAC Computing Services (SCS) and BaBar physicists have been expanding computing resources as rapidly as possible.  Three different areas deserve special mention:

• Compute Farms
  • The existing 900 monoprocessor Sun Netra T1 farm and 512 dual processor VALinux farm was augmented with a new farm of 256 dual processor systems from Rackable, Inc. These are deployed in different ways depending on the needs of BaBar and other experiments. 
  • This Linux Farm is a cost effective way of supplying raw computing power for the BaBar program. Careful selection of hardware has resulted in fewer problems with new acquisitions. The Linux OS is becoming more mature, but has not yet reached the level of stability of more mature OSs such as Solaris.
• The STK Silos continue to be the major source of Mass Storage for the High Energy Physics Program.  During FY02, most new files were recorded on the newer 60GB cartridges acquired the previous year.  Reliability has been good.
• BaBar data is collected in an Objectivity Database that can be accessed world-wide by members of the Collaboration.  This object-oriented database presently contains over 650 Terabytes of data and perhaps comprises the largest “known” database in the world.

 Intel Commodity Computer Purchases

• SLAC purchases 90% of its Intel desktop machines through the DOE established BOA with Dell.  This has provided a substantial cost saving during the year and perhaps an even greater cost saving in user support costs through standardization to one manufacturer.  This has allowed SCS to develop a standard installation procedure for both Windows and Linux systems that pervades the vast majority of Laboratory desktop systems. 
• The Microsoft site license program continues to provide both substantial savings and assures that Laboratory systems are in full conformity with license regulations with regard to Microsoft products.  The latter assurance has freed an estimated 2 FTEs of human support resources from tracking license activities and paid for the program almost entirely in salary costs.

 Virus Detection

The virus detection system continues to be very effective in protecting the Laboratory. The InocuLAN system has been upgraded to the latest version from Computer Associates, InoculateIT. The newer version of the software allows for greater flexibility in managing the clients and distributing signature updates. InoculateIT continues to be very responsive in supplying security updates. In a year when computer users everywhere have been assaulted by a continual barrage of viruses and worms, the network-based virus detection package has been enormously effective in protecting the Laboratory.  Computer Associates has been extremely responsive in supplying signature updates, sometimes several times per week.  The Antigen product from Sybari performs real-time scanning of email entering and leaving the Exchange server.  This has proven to be a useful additional line of defense on top of attachment removal at the mail gateway and real-time virus scanning at the desktop.  Sybari is also very responsive in distributing security updates.

Computing and Information Management Policies

Laboratory policy committees have scheduled monthly meetings but only meet as appropriate to deal with policy issues.  There are two committees responsible for addressing computing policies

• Associate Directors Committee on Computing (ADCC);
• Computer Coordinating Committee (CCC). This group discusses issues of concern and submits policy recommendations to ADCC for approval or other actions.

New Items of Interest in 2002

Intel Systems Summary

• Windows-based machines ended the year with about 1700 systems.  Over 95% of the Windows desktop machines run the SLAC supported Windows versions (Windows NT on desktops and Windows 2000 on laptops), operating in the domain mode for better security and administration.
• The number of Linux systems at SLAC has increased during FY02.  In addition to the nearly 800 Linux farm systems, the number of desktop systems grew to more than 450 systems in September 2002. About 370 of these desktop systems are managed by an extension of the Unix Management tools from SCS under the SCS Unix support umbrella.  This Linux version of “taylor”, the management script that runs nightly on SCS managed Unix systems, has improved both security and manageability.
• Use of Citrix Windows Terminal Server (WTS) Farms continues at SLAC.  The secure BIS cluster requires 128 bit encrypted ICA clients and carefully restricted accounts on the WTS server. 

Windows 2000 Infrastructure and Windows XP Client Support

Active Directory has been rolled out into production at SLAC. The new infrastructure provides increased security with its use of Kerberos. Active Directory also provides significant additional administrative functionality. On the desktop side, a decision has been made to bypass Windows 2000 and go to Microsoft’s latest OS Windows XP. Microsoft will no longer support the Windows NT OS come July 2003, which necessitated the move to a new OS. By going directly to Windows XP rather than Windows 2000, the Laboratory will save time by skipping a version of Microsoft desktop OS.  Continuing to limit the number of Windows versions at the lab will be a significant cost savings.

Exchange 2000

      Now that Active Directory has been rolled into production at the lab, SLAC is ready to implement Exchange 2000. Implementing Active Directory was a precursor to rolling out Exchange 2000 as Exchange 2000 is closely tied to the Active Directory database. With Exchange 2000’s ability to manage multiple e-mail repositories on a single server, Exchange 2000 provides greater flexibility over the Exchange 5.5. The new Exchange 2000 servers will make use of the new Hitachi SAN environment for storage and its ability to recover data quickly with point-in-time copies. 

Windows Storage Systems

The Windows storage growth has been doubling over the past year.  The current Windows storage is 2 TB.  To cost effectively manage the growth of Windows storage, a two tier mechanism of storage is being implemented.  The 1st tier will serve critical data, such as Exchange e-mail, and will reside on a SAN environment which provides uptime and recovery functionality over normal direct attached systems, such as point-in-time copies. This has been procured and is currently being tested for production rollout.  The 2nd tier will serve normal file data that does not have such high requirements in uptime and recovery.  In 2003, the 2nd tier storage system will be procured and implemented.

System administrator training

System administrators have received the following training:

• Windows - basic Windows XP training (Microsoft Course 2272), Windows Active Directory advanced troubleshooting training, and security training for IIS web server and Windows XP.
• Unix/Linux – Unix/Linux security training
• General SAN Institute security training, Project Management for IT Professionals training

Seismic Stability Upgrades

To provide reliable and highly available computers to BaBar researchers and the SLAC community as a whole, in the event of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, it was decided that the SCS computer center needed a number of seismic stability upgrades. Critical in this upgrade plan is the raised flooring system currently in use. This flooring was installed over 20 years ago and the epoxy used has crystallized, the materials used in the construction of the old flooring system do not meet today’s codes. Therefore, the computer center’s raised flooring is being systematically replaced in several phases to 1) improve seismic stability and reliability of the computer center, and 2) remove under floor obstructions to cooling airflow. Phase one of this project was completed in FY2002.

Electrical Power Improvements for Central Servers

Work is ongoing to switch the majority of computer equipment to UPS systems procured in FY2001 and to connect all units with dual power supplies to both UPS and house power.  Load studies are being done to determine the length of time these new UPS systems can provide total power for the computer center, and establish needs for additional battery packs.  The UPS systems are intended to provide enough power to maintain SLAC’s computing and networking infrastructure for a long enough period of time to enable and bring the planned backup generators online.

Institutional Data:

Oracle continues to be the standard database at the lab, resulting in significant cost savings in integration and support.

The different groups responsible for maintaining Institutional Data have continued to streamline and extend procedures:

• For managing people and usage of lab services (for example the exit procedures for terminating personnel and recalling SLAC services and property);
• ESH training, waste management and dosimeters;
• Space management. 

Remedy software is widely used at the lab for action request systems.  Major lab functions (such as computing, facilities, and accelerator) have standardized to this software.

Performance Side-Bar Indicators

HPSS and Objectivity database

A sign of system growth is the mass storage system HPSS that acts as the primary repository of the Objectivity database for the data collected by the BaBar experiment.  The amount of data stored in FY02 grew from approximately 500 terabytes at the start of the year, to nearly a petabyte at the end of the year.

Compute Farms

As in FY01, SLAC Compute Farms have continued their rapid growth.  The table below shows the growth in capacity available to the scientific program.  While the percentage growth was smaller than the previous year, in absolute terms it was nearly as large as the previous growth.  The capacity units below are  the total GigaHertz across the farms; experience shows that physics code production is directly related to the speed ratings of current processors, giving us a useful basis for comparison and scaling.

An additional Linux compute farm is in operation – Accelerator Research (ERDA) has a farm consisting of 32 VALinux machines.

Status of Goals during FY02

1. Test Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 infrastructure

Windows 2000 infrastructure has been put into production, and, Exchange 2000 is expected to be in production by the year-end.

2. Development of DOE Performance Measures based on SCS indicators—no progress

No significant progress has been made in this area.  With several Peer Reviews imminent, it was impractical to establish SCS based measures until the requirements for the reviews are fully known.

 Improvement Action Plan/Goals

Goals for FY 2003

1. Migrate to Windows 2000 infrastructure and Windows XP clients (expected to finish by December 2003).
2. Develop Performance Measures based on the tools available to the Laboratory.
3. Implement a monitoring solution for the Windows infrastructure
4. Implement a 2nd tier storage for the Windows environment.
5. Continue to provide resources to support planned increases in the BaBar requirements for computing resources.
6. Continue raised floor replacement along with seismic bracing in additional areas of the central server machine room.

SLAC | BIS  |BSD

For Questions or comments, Please contact Ziba Mahdavi, Last Updated 10/30/02