RHUL 1

Site ReportSite ReportRoyal HollowayRoyal Holloway

Sukhbir JohalSukhbir JohalSimon GeorgeSimon GeorgeBarry GreenBarry Green

RHUL 2

Hardware

~30 Desktop PC’s ranging from 300 MHz K6 to XP2400+ Athlonmostly RH7.3, few WinXP

~12 Desktop PC’s 450 K6 – 1700 Athlon for ATLAS test bedRH7.3

~24 Laptops both personal and department-ownedRH7.3, 9, Fedora and WinXP

~6 PC servers RH7.3 (one RH 6.0) – mostly Athlon XP2000-3000NFS, NIS, Firewall, Web Server, etc.

1 PC server RH7.3 with 64bit kernel on a Athlon64!as yet unsuccessful with Fedora 64bit

~2 PC servers Windows2000 Native Active DirectoryTerminal server (Citrix/ICA), Office, VB

RHUL 3

Hardware continued..

3 Raid servers 2.0TB array running RH8 (2 will become SE’s for new Farm)user scratch volume, home backup

1 Sun E450 Solaris8Home (NFS)

1 Sun E250 Solaris8Babar

1 SunBlade100 Solaris8Mentor (CAD)

RHUL 4

Compusys Farm

75 nodes 2x Intel Xeon Processors 3Ghz80GB HDD, 1GB RAMRH7.3

1 Master node 2x Intel Xeon Processors 3Ghz2x 80GB HDD, 2GB RAMRH7.3

Failover master node, 1 AIT2 tape unitHP gigabit ethernet throughoutConsole switches

Good experience with Compusys

RHUL Grid:

1 LCFG install server1 CE pbs interfaces with pbs on master node of farm2 SE 2.0TB each (to be installed next week)

RHUL 5

Network

• Mostly Switched 100BaseT to desktops, 1000BaseT to servers• Connected to college 2Gb ring via 1Gb switch on VLAN

• We are not firewalled by the college.• Our firewall is a default DENY setup

• Laptops on 11Mb wireless network and 100Mb ethernet

• Currently experimenting with a gateway/router for a private wireless subnetfor laptops

Network security

• College suffers badly from worm epidemics• Mainly due to badly managed staff machines at home:• connecting via VPN from home or infected laptops brought in to work

• We haven’t had an incident (yet) on the HEP network, but if the campus network is overrun we still suffer the consequences

RHUL 6

Issues:

• Hardware Specification Laptop/desktop - Linux compatibility

• Laptop updates - use of Microsoft SUS for Win OS’s and Yum for RH

• Laptop backup strategy

• Security - physical and network

• Linux releases

RHUL 7

Projects:

• Replacing aging desktop PCs • Replace 15 machines at once to get economies of scale• Buy pre-built to our spec• We decided on the following spec:

K7VTA3 (full ATX motherboard) 1.44 MB Floppy

AMD AthlonXP 2400+ CPU256MB DDRR PC2700 RAM40GB HDD 7200rpm16x DVD ROMRadeon 7000 AGP 32MB graphics card

• Competitive quotes from companies like:Midland, BBN, Savastore, Nsysonline, Aligatortech, Pentathlon

• Cost <£200 each

•5x PCI slots, 1x AGP slot• Supports AMD Athlon XP CPUs up to 3000+• 333MHz FSB• on board 10/100Mbps LAN• on board audio• 6 USB 2.0 Ports (4 at rear, 2 at front)• 2 DIMM Slots (max. 2GB) DDR PC2700• 1x Serial Port, 1x Parallel Port

RHUL 8

Projects:

• Remote windows update management:

• Critical security issue for group laptops • Tried MS SUS1 (too buggy) and MBSA (useless and discontinued)• Waiting for Microsoft SUS release 2 which seems to have a lot more

features and is more stable for laptop updates.

• Looking at Microsoft Services for Unix (SFU3.5)Provides interoperability of Active Directory and NISNFS Alternative to Samba?

RHUL 9

Linux versions

• RedHat 7.3• updates from Fedora and CERN seem to work well• looks ok for the rest of this year

• RHEL3• cost still an issue, even though the lowest price has come down (workstation + educational price + no support)• admin effort of having to deal with paid licensing at all• concern that future CERN deal might not have the right pricing for us

• Scientific Linux (SLC)• one test workstation set up, so far so good• seems like a perfect HEP solution• planning to use this on new desktop machines this summer (hardware support for new machines in RedHat 7.3 is now a problem)

RHUL 10