It's a pleasure to present you our third newsletter. We try to keep the release schedule close to one, not exceeding two months, balanced between being informational and not too chatty.
Apart from the regular project progress and IT news, there are quite some chapters on policies that will affect how observations will be done and what is required to access data in the future. There's also a section on licensing issues of data no longer embargoed.
Taras Yakobchuk introduces the new tool he is developing for visualizing and analyzing calibrated GRIS/GREGOR data. The tool is not only intended to help experts analyzing data offered by SDC, but it should also allow access to laypersons who are not experts in dealing with this type of data.
We would like to encourage you to openly comment on any parts. Feedback is always welcome and helps us to deliver a better product.
Editorial
📰 Editorial
🔒 What goes here?
Project Status
SDC Project Status 03-2021 (06.07.2021)
Solution Development and Integration.
Project has now shifted into a phase where we are building the actual SDC platform and creating/acquiring all necessary components. These components are inhouse developed software for instrument pipelines and analysis, compute, network and storage hardware, middleware (RUCIO, Kubernetes, Docker etc.) and governance/management/documentation software like Jira Service Management and Confluence.
There are still some work to be done to find all suitable solution components and thus shaping the final scope of SDC. We aim to build SDC as service platform for solar community with continuous focus on users and platform development.
📋 Summary
Current project health | Current project status | Project constraints |
|---|---|---|
YELLOW | Finalizing some tasks for solution design and creating solution components. Governance model not finalized and implementation not started yet. | Resources and their availability. Technology POCs taking more time than predicted. |
📊 Project status
Accomplishments
High-level solution design
Some software components created (GRIS Viewer)
Hardware acquisition process started
RUCIO test environment established
Next steps
Continue selecting solution components and creating solution components
Risks & project issues
Lack of resources
Resource availability
Multiple process implementations at the same time
No agreed governance model
Governance
👩⚖️ Policies, Frameworks & Governance
ITIL v4 process model going to be partially adopted for service management purposes
Data policies definition started
SDC governance model and scope to be decided
📜
Products & Tools
🛠 SDC Products & Tools
Standardized GRIS Pipeline
The GRIS reduction pipeline was merged to a common version in collaboration with M. Collados. The version running at OT and Freiburg now both produce data which is compatible with downstream SDC tools. The latest version of the pipeline can always be found on the KIS GitLab server. The current OT version will be synced to the ulises branch and merged into the main production branch periodically.
SDC data archive
Get access to data from GRIS/GREGOR and LARS/VTT instruments and the ChroTel full-disc telescope at OT.
Updates as of July 2021
The detail pages for observations have been reworked see an example here:
Added dynamic carousel of preview data products
Added flexible selection for downloading associated data
VFISV inversion results have been added for most of the GRIS observations. The website now includes information on line of sight velocity and magnetic field strength
Development process has streamlined:
automated test deployments for quicker iterations and fixes
Changes to the UI will occur in regular sprints. We’re currently collecting ideas here
Added historic ChroTel data for 2013, thanks to Andrea Diercke from AIP for contacting us and providing us with this supplemental archive.
Conferences & Workshops
📊 Conferences & Workshops
Forthcoming Conferences/Workshops of Interest 2021
Every second Thursdays, 12:30-13:30 CET
PUNCH Lunch Seminar (see SDC calendar invitation for zoom links)
11 Feb 2021: PUNCH4NFDI and ESCAPE - towards data lakes
25 Feb 2021: PUNCH Curriculum Workshop
KIS internal Typo3 Editors' training
July 13 & 14, 2021, 10:00 - 12:00 CEST registration needed!
SDC participation in Conferences & Workshops
Nov. 26, 2020:
2nd SOLAR net Forum Meeting for Telescopes and Databases
Talk: Big Data Storage -- The KIS SDC case, NBG, PC & PK, 2nd SOLARNET Forum (Nov 26)
Nazaret Bello GonzalezPetri Kehusmaa Peter Caligari
SDC Collaborations
🤲 SDC Collaborations
SOLARNET https://solarnet-project.eu
KIS coordinates the SOLARNET H2020 Project that brings together European solar research institutions and companies to provide access to the large European solar observatories, supercomputing power and data. KIS SDC is actively participating in WP5 and WP2 in coordinating and developing data curation and archiving tools in collaborations with European colleagues.
Contact on KIS SDC activities in SOLARNET: Nazaret Bello Gonzalez nbello@leibniz-kis.de
ESCAPE https://projectescape.eu/
KIS is a member of the European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle Physics ESFRI Research Infrastructures (ESCAPE H2020, 2019 - 2022) Project aiming to bring together people and services to build the European Open Science Cloud. KIS SDC participates in WP4 and WP5 to bring ground-based solar data into the broader Astronomical VO and the development tools to handle large solar data sets.
Contact on KIS SDC activities in ESCAPE: Nazaret Bello Gonzalez nbello@leibniz-kis.de
KIS is one of the European institutes strongly supporting the European Solar Telescope project. KIS SDC represents the EST data centre development activities in a number of international projects like ESCAPE and the Group of European Data Experts (GEDE-RDA).
Contact on KIS SDC as EST data centre representative: Nazaret Bello Gonzalez nbello@leibniz-kis.de
PUNCH4NFDI https://www.punch4nfdi.de
KIS is a participant (not a member) of the PUNCH4NFDI Consortium. PUNCH4NFDI is the NFDI (National Research Data Infrastructure) consortium of particle, astro-, astroparticle, hadron and nuclear physics, representing about 9.000 scientists with a Ph.D. in Germany, from universities, the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz Association, and the Helmholtz Association. PUNCH4NFDI is the setup of a federated and "FAIR" science data platform, offering the infrastructures and interfaces necessary for the access to and use of data and computing resources of the involved communities and beyond. PUNCH4NFDI is currently competing with other consortia to be funded by the DFG (final response expected in spring 2021). KIS SDC aims to become a full member of PUNCH and federate our efforts on ground-based solar data dissemination to the broad particle and astroparticle communities.
Contact on KIS SDC as PUNCH4NFDI participant: Nazaret Bello Gonzalez nbello@leibniz-kis.de & Peter Caligari mailto:cale@leibniz-kis.de
IT news
🖥 IT news
Ongoing & Future developments
Webpage
KIS The design of the new website is essentially complete. We are currently making some final technical adjustments to the webserver and Typo3. The website is already running at the deployment (VM-ware) server at KIS and is already publicly available at the web address:
After the content has been moved, the server will be renamed http://www.leibniz-kis.de , and the old site will be shut down.
One of the reasons for the relaunch was to increase support of the particular browsers used by people with disabilities. This requires specific fields in the back-end to be filled in so that the page content can be appropriately classified. We will have a training course on handling the typo3 back-end in general, focusing on the above points on
July 13 & 14, 2021, 10:00 CEST (Editors' training)
We currently plan to avoid any user login in the frontend. This would allow us to not have to use cookies at all, rendering the need to use these annoying GDPR popups obsolete. However, this means we might not have any restricted areas on the website at all (including an Intranet)! This is a radical approach, and we might not be able to stringently follow through with this (see below). In that case, the Intranet on the website will be limited to purely informational pages; any documents now downloadable on the old website should be migrated to the cloud (wolke7). Anyhow, Typo3 allows hosting multiple websites under a single installation sharing the basic design and resources. Therefore, any websites requiring user registration and login (like the Intranet or a possible OT-webpage) might be built as separate websites, keeping the publicly accessible website login-free.
Network
Status of the dedicated 10 Gbit line between KIS & OT
KIS OT The missing network equipment for the end at KIS will be installed in the second week of July. We will then try to establish the link remotely from Freiburg with the help of personnel at the telescopes.
Test of (application) firewalls at KIS
KIS OT Firewall testing at KIS (see https://leibniz-kis.atlassian.net/l/c/rF8kmXjv ) has terminated. Two manufacturers are still beeing considered, and a final choice will be made as soon as possible.
We (IT) still very much advocate going for high-availability setups for KIS and OT (in Freiburg) because KIS will host a significant part of SDC and OT because there's no trained personnel on-site, and replacements to the Canary islands take time).
Storage
KIS SDC We are currently setting up one DELL R740XD2 as a (fake) dCache cluster running two (redundant) dCache pools on VM-ware. This host serves as a testbed to simulate hardware and network failures in the dCache cluster to come while providing a failure-tolerant (hopefully) net capacity of about 100 TB to KIS, alleviating the currently pressing storage shortage.
Starting in July, six more comparable hosts will be purchased through a public tender. These will have a similar setup and form storage Tier1 (near-line) of SDC at KIS. We expect the hosts to arrive in late September.
We use ZFS on virtualized Debian servers as a basis for the individual dCache-nodes. ZFS uses copy-on-write and checksums any blocks on disk and provides auto-healing. Zpools will most probably use RAIDZ or RAIDZ2, and any file will reside on at least 2 different servers. At the time of this writing, the only other file system offering similar features is BTRFS, but support for BTRFS was recently pulled from some major distributions (e.g. CentOS, the distro that has mainly been used at the KIS so far).
SDC The 100 TB space on Microsoft Azure for cold data still needs some configuration. As of today, the third-party software responsible for moving files between our Isilon storage cluster (mars) and the cloud has problems doing so from Linux clients in a satisfactory way. The manufacturer of the software is working on the issue.
Current Resources
Compute nodes
hostname | # of CPUs & total cores | ram [GB] |
|---|---|---|
patty KIS | 2 x AMD EPYC 7742, 128 cores | 1024 |
itchy & selma KIS | 4 x Xeon(R) CPU E5-4657L v2 @ 2.40GHz, 48 cores | 512 |
scratchy KIS hathi OT | 4 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-4650L @ 2.60GHz, 32 cores | 512 |
Central storage space
Total available disk space for /home (KIS OT), /dat (KIS OT), /archive (KIS), /instruments (OT)
name | total [TB, brutto] | free [TB, brutto] |
|---|---|---|
mars KIS | 758 | 39 |
quake KIS/SEISMO | 61 | 0 |
halo KIS/SEISMO | 145 | 44,5 |
jane OT | 130 (-> 198) | 23 |
References
📎 References
Products & Tools
SDC data archive: https://sdc.leibniz-kis.de/
Speckle reconstruction: https://gitlab.leibniz-kis.de/sdc/speckle-cookbook
Forthcoming Conferences/Workshops
June 01-02 (16:00 - 17:30): 15th International dCache Workshop
June 10-11, 2021: 3th International Workshop on Science Gateways | IWSG 2021
June 28, 2021: Data-intensive radio astronomy: bringing astrophysics to the exabyte era
Collaborations
SOLARNET: https://solarnet-project.eu
ESCAPE: https://projectescape.eu/
PUNCH4NFDI: https://www.punch4nfdi.de
Quick links
Computer load: http://ganglia.leibniz-kis.de
Drafts of web-page relaunch: https://wolke7.leibniz-kis.de/s/wEkPRsA5xKRgYbB
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