CUG.Log

Operating Systems SIG Report

The OS SIG this year was, as usual, very active. I chose to break it into three pieces, each of which was only 20 minutes long:

• Cray Only, during which attendees with SGI badges were not allowed.
• SGI Only, during which attendees with Cray badges were not allowed.
• CUG Only, during which neither Cray nor SGI attendees were allowed.

This format worked very nicely for us with the exception that 20 minutes is not enough time to get much accomplished. This was just one example of the difficulty of holding a two vendor conference. The vendors, though, were open and forthcoming with answers to our questions.

I took some opinion polls with the following results (note that these were not scientific and the results can only be used to show general opinions):

• If two conferences were offered each year, with one devoted to Cray, Inc and the other to SGI, who would attend both or just Cray or SGI? 15 voted for attending both? 6 voted for attending just Cray, Inc.; 3 voted for attending just SGI
• Who would like two-vendor conferences with a weekend tutorial session in between? 4 voted for this option.
• Who would like for the conference to be 3-day single vendor with Wednesday as a tutorial day? 17 voted for this option.
• a) Who would like a two-vendor conference just like Noordwijk? 4 voted for this option.
  b) Who would like for two-vendor conference with a weekend in between (weekend completely open)? 7 voted for this option.
• Who prefers a single vendor conference? 20 voted for this option.

One thing was clear, however, which was that the vast majority of CUG members did not like for both vendors to be present and that 2 days with one vendor was simply not sufficient to conduct normal conference business. This matched my impression of the Vendors also. When competing vendors are both present in the same area, they are not as open with their customers as they would be when alone with their customers.

A large part of the CUG is the Hall talk, which was also subdued. I heard of several CUG site members that had started a dialogue with one of the vendors only to be cut short when the competing vendor neared. As a representative for our member sites, it is our responsibility to insure that they have an open forum for candid discussions with the vendors.

The CUG has four roles regardless of how many vendors are present. When the number of Vendors increases, the complexity of those roles multiplies by the number of vendors present. These roles are:

• Provide an open forum for member site and member site dialogue.
• Provide an open forum for our member site and vendor dialogue.
• Lobby the vendors with the voice of our membership to make changes that help make our HPC roles easier.
• Keep abreast of CUG membership needs to insure they continue to be met via the program.

And now I step off of my Soap Box to discuss other important issues that arose in the OS SIG meeting.

This is our second year working with SGI to help them learn the difference between the workstation administration paradigm and the Data Center administration paradigm. There are important differences that SGI had to face for the first time when they entered the Server market. The security of the systems they release has been a big issue in the last two SIG meetings, and SGI has recognized that the CUG membership would like to receive systems that are reasonably secure (no open passwords, tcpwrappers for network services, etc.). A number of alternatives were discussed to satisfy both the workstation and Data Center paradigms with the favored one being a prompt the first time a system is booted to walk through securing the system. The default would remain the way systems are now released. We'll see where this leads.

Cray has seen the need for detailed migration plans for those sites that will be migrating from Heritage Cray Products to the SV-2 and will be working on those documents over the next few months. The difficulty of migrating our existing DMF data was brought to light in several discussions, and Cray recognizes this will be an important part of the migration effort.

Our hour SIG session was very fast paced. With two vendors and CUG business to be conducted, one hour is not enough time. Whatever we decide to accommodate our vendors in the future must include dedicated OS SIGs. It would be interesting to see how the other SIGs faired with a two vendor focus.

Chuck Keagle
Boeing Enterprise Servers
chuck.keagle@boeing.com