Grid Scheduling Architecture Research Group
OGF 24, Group Session
September 17, 2008
Singapore
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Note taker: Philipp Wieder
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The main discussion during the session was the lack of progress made by the group. Reasons and means to change this have been discussed. 

- Proposal by Wolfgang: Re-charter, focus on a more specific topic (not the generic GSA), become Working Group. The inter-scheduler protocol is e.g. of interest.

- Q (Ramin): What is missing that should be the focus of the GSA-RG? What should we focus on? Where are the problems?
  + Alexander: Something that fills the gap of EMS.
  + Philipp: EMS is too vague, would go into direction GSA again.

  + Oliver: Regarding the generic overall acrichtecture, there is no common concept of the people participating in GSA regarding what a common arch. should look like. Clear focus is needed, but how this can be achieve dis unclear.

  + Alexander: The missing progress is not a problem of interest of the participants, more of the lack of involvement and leadership.

  + Wolfgang: The "Barcelona" (OGF 23) interop. protocol is an important issue for scheduling and resource management.
 
- GFSG gossip (Ramin): If GSA is compared to GRAAP, for example, which has 8 implementations mainly in the domain of HPC, a clear focus is visible. But GSA is just too broad.

- Discussion of interoperability scenario
 + Ramin: What is planne dto be used in the German scheduling project? - Alexander: WS-Agreement plus X. - Ramin: WS-Agreeement alone would not work. Would you go for HPCBP? Alexander: The project would try to, and since Platform is on board, expertise is there.
+ Ramin; Ok, basis for scheduling project is OGF stuff. What about SLA@SOI? - Costas: This is not clear yet. GSA should not count on SLA@SOI.
+ Ramin: GRAAP need Advance Reservation for most of its use cases, but how dependend is the specification on WSRF (which may be a showstopper for new projects to implement)? - A: WS-Agreement depends on WSRF. Philipp: How difficult to get rid of WSRF in WS-Agreeement? - Oliver: This is not so easy, since WS-Agreement is about stateful services. - Alexander: Is WS-Lifetime needed? - Oliver: Perhaps, but would switching to WS-Transfer et al. imply real progress? - Alexander: It seems that a number of people switch to WS-Transfer. - Oliver: It could be done like in BES: everybody implements their own state engine. - Ramin: A lot of people will not touch WSRF starting something new. WS-Transfer more likely the choice. --- Cut [more a GRAAP discussion] --
  + Diverse details like OGSA-RSS and OGSA have been discussed briefly.

- Next steps? How to progress?
  + It is not so much a content problem, but a leadership problem. There is enough interest.
  + Ramin: Would IANOS [www.ianos.org] be interested in being standards-compliant? - Oliver: Would be of interest, but not all requirements fit with the interoperability scenario in GSA. But WS-Agreement, JSDL, and CGS are used by IANOS.
  + Philipp: If looking for synergies, is IANOS a potential driver for GSA? Oliver: IANOS goes more into the direction of requirements for OGSA-RSS. - Wolfgang: INAOS is interested in investing time in GSA. Hassan may be a candidate to help out in GSA.
  + Alexander: The interop. scenario will be implemented in teikoku anyway.

- Decision:
  + Stay with the interop. scenario.
  + Alexander will support Philipp leading the group.
  + Continue as planned.

- Next steps:
 + Alexander: cadence of phone calls
 +  Philipp: dig out all existing material
 + Philipp:  summarise discussion and come up with a roadmap