Minutes of the GGF6 Sessions

The proposed Production Grid Management Group met for two sessions at GGF-6. Judith Utley, NASA Ames, led both sessions 
since our co-chair, Franz-Josef Pfreundt, was unable to attend GGF-6. Judith went over the agendas for both sessions. 

In the first sessions the purpose of the group was stated: A forum for grid practitioners to document experiences, best 
practices, and informational documents. 

The status of the group was reviewed. This group is awaiting final approval of the GFSG. The three options under 
consideration are becoming the research group originally requested, a working group to produce a 'best practices' paper,
 or be folded into the Grid User Services RG. A draft charter for a research group and one for a working group were 
reviewed. Bill Johnston and Satoshi Matsuoka, members of the GFSG present, suggested that 'guidelines' be changed to 
'recommendations' in the charter. A temporary mailing list will be setup until a GGF sanctioned mailing list can be 
established. Members of this list will be taken from the sign up list. 

David Foster, CERN, gave an interesting presentation on the plans for LCG. A very challenging project. 

The group started discussion on topics or issues for a Best Practices paper. A number of issues were discussed. The full
 list is on this website for review. 
* Considerations and Discussions: 

o Define Scope 

* Types of grids 
* Sizes of grids 
* Types of users 

o Experiences of the group 

* Issues 
* Differences between running a supercomputer center and a grid of supercomputers 
The need to include case studies or perhaps have a separate paper of case studies would be helpful to those planning 
grids. 

A break divided the two sessions. At the beginning of the second session, a summary of the first session was given. All 
topics gathered in the first session were reviewed. New topics were added. At this point each topic was discussed and 
clarified where needed. An attempt was made to organize the topics but without the time for printing the list of topics 
this was found to be difficult. Judith stated that the list would be on the website the week of 10/21 for group members 
to review and comment. The final organization of the paper will be done via email. 
* Case studies to be used 
o UNICORE 
o Alliance 
o IPG 
o Asia-Pacific 
o E-Science 
o SAM 
o PDSF 
o A commercial example 
o Others may be added 

* Those who volunteered to contribute to the paper: 
o Steve Chan, LBL 
o Doru Marcusiu, NCSA 
o Steve Newhouse, E-Science 
o Bruce Barkstrom, EOS 
o Lee Lueking, SAM 
o David Foster, CERN 
o Judith Utley, NASA IPG 
o Anthony Lisotta, NASA IPG 
o Tanaka, Asia-Pacific 
o Lee Lueking, SAM 
o David Foster, CERN 
o Dietmar Erwin, UNICORE 
At the point the members of the GFSG present took the group back to the research group draft charter for review and 
modification. The final charter will also be published on the website.