Much Ado

About seemingly trivial stuff in the last couple of weeks, like how to redirect an URL in JSF, how to completely wipe off sensitive, crucial information that were accidently, mistakenly checked into CVS, etc. But as the happy ending, I finished my part of transforming CIMA portal to use GridFTP for data transfer services. (Of course I have to mention CIMA portal often to maintain my seat in the Google search competition.)

In the coming couple of weeks, besides the PolarGrid meeting and a quick trip to the west, I expect to be watching videos and surfing webs, hoping to find something in the cloud.

Short Week

with long meetings started off the year. CIMA project plans were discussed, and I messed with Log4J for a while to (slightly) improve GridFTP portlet performance further. Also spent some time on the CDI pre proposal, we'll see how far this one goes.

Around and Beyond SC07

Before I even noticed, two whole months flew around that emotional and exhausting conference in Reno. I was unintentionally and indirectly reminded the other day that anxious readers have been waiting for news updates, here comes the chronicle summary I guess.

• CIMA High Availability prototype finished before SC07. Several application level bugs and protocol limitations have been discovered, fixed, or planned for improvements. After enormous physical cable pulling tests in the machine room, we were finally confident with what to expect in various failure cases, and set up the two failover servers in geographically distributed locations. Well, 50 miles apart may not be much, but it's better than 5 inches.


• SC07 had been quite eventful: attended GCE07 because my name incidentally appeared in one of the papers; gave a booth presentation on the CIMA High Availability project; served as the mobile communication center between reno booth and CIMA east coast headquarter office; met old friends scattered in booths around the show floor; and most important of all, witnessed the great conquer of data capacitor winning the bandwidth challenge, which makes us all proud.


• Heading back and onto the portal world, we started a project to replace open direct data links in CIMA portal with GridFTP on demand transferring services. The idea is rather straightforward, while sorting through complex code structures resulted from a blend of Windows and Linux developers over the years had not been. A prototype is now in place after all the funs with jars, and the portlet is about twice slower than the original. Our clients cheered whole-heartedly, "Impressive! Much faster than I expected!" Though paying a performance price in exchange for security is expected, we are still seeking ways to bargain.


• iCenter project that collaborates with the biology department to establish data management infrastructures for a new light-microscopy core facility is steadily progressing. A couple of productive meetings acquiring user requirements have been held.


• WIYN ODI Data Pipeline and Distribution project is also marching forward, and we had a whole day planning and discussion meeting with visitors from LSST and NOAO just recently.


• Now talking about meetings, there had been a few others too, like final TeraGrid weekly status meeting, status meeting with glorious data capacitor, and strategic meeting preparation meeting. Does Skype video conferencing count?

Looking forward, a couple of other portal projects are in the lineup too, and I'm hoping to work/write more about the high availability project with DRBD and heartbeat in my copious free time, before it's completely spaced.

With the holiday season right around the corner, I'm very attempted to make a resolution about more dedicated blogging in the coming new year, via a youtube-banned video. So long, 2007.

Tunnel Light

It had been a reasonably quiet and productive week.

• After enough messing around with credentials, certificates, and things like that, I witnessed some GridFTP portal displaying my home directories on both Data Capacitor and HPSS, how rewarding.


• Another WYIN/ODI project meeting with astronomers, indicating yet another potential CIMA collaboration. The interested starting point seems to be resuming old RoboScope work for SpectraBot.


• Application level failover testings for CIMA. The system now seems to be capable of surviving most failures/outages except for one, which roots deep down at the instrument data collection side.


• Boiled down the annoying "There is something wrong" problem with the heatbeat configuration, bless our poor souls that suffered this message for months.


• Reviewed a paper for GCE07, and also got back "warm words" for the one with my name on it.

More failover testings await for the week ahead, mostly at the system level. If we could tune up across distances by Friday, I'd see that light at the end of the tunnel better, I mean the tunnel of SC07 of course.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Sometime in late September, I transferred to this new group focusing on portal and science gateway development, where everyone blogs everything. While down the rabbit hole, one might as well keep up with the trend. And in case you wonder, yes it's from Tales of Symphonia.

Meetings, meetings, Meetings.

It had been a couple of quite active weeks, some of us met even more than once:

• Regular Data Capacitor group meetings: SC07 is the theme. A separate GridFTP server to DC is on the way too.


• Portal group meetings: dissertation work review, especially for CIMA, in 10 slides or less to impress general audience for possible collaborations (SNS at ORNL, etc.); setting priorities for projects.


• WYIN/ODI project meeting with astronomers: short presentations, getting acquainted, and background stories.


• RT-ALL strategy meeting: long


• Regular TeraGrid meetings: recoup


• Astronomy department brown bag seminar: using Data Capacitor for ODI project


• Tech Tuesday talk: preserving data objecs


• CS/PTL/UITS monthly meeting: infoshare

Progress

• Got TeraGrid account, login, tried single-sign-on, tested gridftp between DC and HPSS.


• Updated CIMA web service for Admin portlet to indicate number of movies associated with a given sample.


• Oh yeah, of course wrote this blog, using correct HTML under right editor, you think that's easy?

Miscellaneous

• Couldn't out-wait Apple on Leopard, hence went ahead and got the MBP. A beauty, and, (un)fortunately hot.


• ORNL is renewing my badge, oh the number of emails and resumes it takes.


• Made SC travel arrangement, at least that one was not bad at all.

To Do

• More testings with GridFTP, BigRed, DC, HPSS, TeraGrid credentials. What exactly is that SC portal supposed to be or do?


• Extensive CIMA failover testings, both at application and system levels. Targeted service up date is Oct. 19th.


• 10-15 minutes SC07 presentation on CIMA failover, better start thinking about slides.


• Read up on NVO before next meeting with astronomers, Tuesday Oct. 9th.