USNO Difx Correlator kick off meeting

Agenda

• Introductions
• Describe and agree on monthly meetings (strawman below, doesn't apply for kick off meeting)
  • Report on work since last meeting
  • Work to be done in next month
  • Budget status
  • Open issues
• Coordination
  • Project book pointer
  • Mailing list (external mailing list send wiki sign up)
  • Other ?
• Present project schedule
  • Potential need for early visit in May to check off on test cluster
    • Late May seems preferable
  • Need to begin orders Monday if possible
• Plan for initial test cluster
  • Small prototype cluster
  • 10gbit switch
  • 2 Mark5s
• Miscellaneous details if time permits
  • Brief description of cluster architecture
  • RHEL 6.x
  • Network Addressing (mirror USNO addressing via bridged test rack network)

• USNO SAN connectivity

Discussion

• Continue with monthly meetings first Thursday of every month
• NRAO to set up mailing list and send WIKI access instructions
• General agreement to a late May USNO visit to Socorro to examine prototype cluster
• NRAO to send power and heat load estimate to USNO
• USNO to send likely IP ranges for final cluster, NRAO will use for test cluster
• Make 10gbit network be fiber rather than UTP
• USNO to send Mark5 10gbit connector type which drives switch SFP+ module selection
• SAN could connect either directly to correlator switch or to a seperate switch with bonded interconnect to correlator switch
• Correlator nodes are planned to be dual processor 8 core (16 total cores) but final decision will await test cluster
• USNO will send any Security policies we need to accommodate
• Walter and others may visit USNO this summer to take a look at existing GUI's
• Question about contract requirement inspection of supplies record keeping
  • What form do those records take and how long do we keep them
  • USNO to answer above
• We'll try and use video conferencing next time
• Discussion of Mark5 unit support
  • We can distribute Difx software to them from correlator support nodes
  • OS support may be beyond the scope of the project and not really necessary.
  • NRAO will look at cross compiling 32bit Difx