[Twg] 2011-01-27 meeting minutes and concall reminder

[John Carrier]

Hi all,

Minutes from last week's meeting are attached.  Please send any corrections to the reflector. 

I have sent a summary of the requirements discussion to discuss at lists.opensfs.org.  Please continue the discussion on that reflector, which is open for public subscription.

And, finally, a reminder that we have a call later this morning to continue discussing requirements for the architecture.  We need to prepare for the community conference calls that will start next week including its schedule.  

Thanks,

--jc

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OpenSFS Technical Working Group
Meeting minutes : 01/27/2011

Concall: start : 9:30a PT, end : 10:32a PT)

Next meeting: Thursday, 2/3/2011 @ 9:30a PT/12:30p ET
   Dial-in numbers are 715-726-4994 or 866-304-8294.  The meeting ID and
   password are 7012090.


attending
   Name              Organization   email
   ----------------- -------------- ----------------------------
   John Carrier      Cray           carrier at cray.com
   Kit Westeneat     DDN            kwesteneat at ddn.com
   Justin Miller     IU             jupmille at indiana.edu                            
   Steve Simms       IU             ssimms at indiana.edu                            
   Damian Hazen      LBL            dhazen at lbl.gov
   Marc Stearman     LLNL           marc at llnl.gov
   Ken Hornstein     NRL            kenh at cmf.nrl.navy.mil
   Dave Dillow       ORNL           dillowda at ornl.gov
   Sarp Oral         ORNL           oralhs at ornl.gov
   Andreas Dilger    Whamcloud      adilger at whamcloud.com
   Eric Barton       Whamcloud      eeb at whamcloud.com
   Robert Read       Whamcloud      rread at whamcloud.com
   Nathan Rutman     Xyratex        nathan_rutman at xyratex.com
   Peter Bojanic     Xyratex        peter_bojanic at xyratex.com


Agenda
   summary of F2F discussion on 1/26

Discussion

   John briefly reviewed his notes from the F2F meeting on 1/26 (see
   email titled "[Twg] Lustre Requirements and Roadmap" in the archive).
   The main point is that the OpenSFS Board felt that the RFP should be
   based on requirements, not features and asked the TWG to pursue a
   roadmap based on performance requirements for Lustre from the
   community.
   
   Based on our previous efforts to gather feature requirements, we
   propose that we focus on requirements for metadata performance and
   the backend storage without specifying the solutions.
   
   Dave lead a discussion of how to state performance requirements.  His
   users need 'du' to be faster.  Should the requirement specify stats
   per second or the particular command he wants to go faster?  Eric
   discussed the problems with the existing architecture.  

   Several groups are pursuing particular features to improve metadata
   performance. Andreas thought that OpenSFS should fund features that
   vendors don't want to fund, such as portals cleanup.  Eric mentioned
   the OSD restructuring, which is needed to complete work with btrfs.
   The working group needs to identify requirements that motivate these
   projects before we can get them in an OpenSFS RFP.

   Eric lead a discussion of considering projects composed of multiple
   parts.  Not all projects will yield a direct benefit but are pieces
   of implementation needed to reach a longer-term goal.  The working
   group will need to consider creating requirements in terms of these
   intermediate steps.

   There is also the concern for projects with multiple collaborators.
   Whereever development contracts go, designs need to be in the open.
   Requirements will define what is delivered for the RFP, but there
   must be agreement on the underlying architecture to develop them.

   Sun's HPCS contract with Cray was one example of structuring RFPs to
   allow developers to design, architect, and implement
   features based on requirements.  
   
   Eric mentioned that the requirements list didn't include capacities
   or rates.  And the focus on metadata and backend storage misses
   requirements to make Lustre easier to manage.
   
   OpenSFS wants to keep this discussion out in the open. Therefore,  we
   are moving the discussion of requirements, architecture, and roadmap
   to discuss at lists.opensfs.org.  John will send out the initial list
   from his notes to this reflector and
   lustre-community at lists.lustre.org.

meeting end : 10:32 PT