Editorial

Aperio

Traditionally all data processing in solar physics is typically done on files. While this option will prevail in SDC, it is not the best way to deal with large data sets, where computations need to be done where the data resides and not vice versa. To interface data in SDC programmatically, APIs are needed for the most common programming languages like Python and IDL. 

We are pleased that we could win Aperio Software to develop a Python API for SDC. Aperio Software is heavily involved in the development of SunPy and Astropy, a community effort to develop Python packages for Solar Physics and Astronomy. Drew Leonard, one of the founders of Aperio, developed the prototype for the VTF pipeline. The contract divides into a design and implementation phase. During the former, Drew will clarify what is expected from the future API and what requirements it must meet through workshops and one-on-one meetings. Expect the first version for mid-2022. 

Project Status

Open

Solution Development and Integration Phase.

Solution Development and Integration

The project has now shifted into a phase where we are building the actual SDC platform and creating/acquiring all necessary components. These components are in-house 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 is 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 a service platform for the solar community with a continuous focus on users and platform development.

Summary Jul 6, 2021

  Project status

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

Standardized GRIS Pipeline

The GRIS reduction pipeline was merged to a common version in collaboration with M. Collados (IAC, GRIS PI). The version running at OT and Freiburg now both produce data that 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 GRIS VFISV-Inversion pipeline

A pipeline code for performing Milne-Eddington inversions of GRIS spectropolarimetric data is now available at,

https://gitlab.leibniz-kis.de/sdc/grisinv

The pipeline uses the Very Fast Inversion of the Stokes Vector (VFISV, Borrero et al. 2011) code v5.0 (node for spectrograph data) as the main backend to carry out a Milne-Eddington Stokes inversion for individual spectral lines.
The current implementation of the pipeline is a Python MPI wrapper around the VFISV code to easily work with the GRIS data. The inversion for the desired spectral line is performed using VFISV and the buffer with the inversion results is communicated to the Python module. The Python module propagates the keywords from level 1 (L1) and packages the inversion results and outputs a FITS file (when used as a command-line interface) or returns an NDarray (when called within a python script).

For more information on installing and using the pipeline, check the above GitLab repository.

Please report any issues with the code using the link below,

https://gitlab.leibniz-kis.de/sdc/grisinv/-/issues/new?issue

SDC data archive

https://sdc.leibniz-kis.de/

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

• The 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.

GRISView

GRISView is a new visualization and analysis tool to work with GRIS/GREGOR calibrated datasets as distributed by the SDC website. It is written in Python with GUI made using Qt cross-platform framework.

Open

Currently implemented features include:

• Quick panning and zooming of map images and spectra using mouse

• Multiple POI (point-of-interest) and ROI (rectangle-of-interest) for easy inspection of spectral changes across the map

• Distance measurement between multiple map points given in different units

• Intensity profile plots along a given line segment, linking several profiles for radial profiles checking

• Interactive color bars used to view histogram, adjust image contrast, select and modify the viewing color scheme

• Generating contours for map images, easy levels adjustment, and color setting

• Browsing spectra with cursor moving using keyboard and mouse shortcuts, quick navigation using marker list

• Relative scale for quick wavelengths difference evaluation at the cursor position

• Viewing observation FITS files headers

• Support for both individual observations and time-series

Next, it is planned to add the following:

• Exporting current spectra and map plots as images and data files

• Derived quantities visualization e.g. Q/I, V/I, DOLP (degree of linear polarization) etc.

• Various normalizations of spectra e.g. to a selected signal level, local continuum, quiet Sun

• Spectral line fitting and line parameters determination

• Saving and restoring working sessions

Conferences & Workshops

Forthcoming Conferences/Workshops of Interest 2021

Every second Thursday, 12:30-13:30 CET (currently on summer break)

PUNCH Lunch Seminar (see SDC calendar invitation for zoom links)

KIS internal Typo3 Editors' training

July 13 & 14, 2021, 10:00 - 12:00 CEST registration needed!

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

EST https://www.est-east.eu/

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 has been granted funds and will start officially its activities on October 1, 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

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 

We currently plan to avoid any user login in the front end. 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 being 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

Central storage space

Total available disk space for /home (KIS OT), /dat (KIS OT), /archive (KIS), /instruments (OT)

 References

References

Products & Tools

• SDC data archive: https://sdc.leibniz-kis.de/

• Speckle reconstruction: https://gitlab.leibniz-kis.de/sdc/speckle-cookbook

Collaborations

• SOLARNET: https://solarnet-project.eu

• ESCAPE: https://projectescape.eu/

• EST: https://www.est-east.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