perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Jason Zurawski <>]

Hi Stefan;

The argument cannot be boiled down to 'will it cause people to flee if it is 
hard', it comes down to putting out the best quality product that we can.  
'Product' here is a combination of the software and the BCP that goes with 
it, and when we are wrong we need to own up to it - the appliance mentality 
is wrong.  We cannot guarantee the 'appliance' use case - it does a 
disservice to our product and our customers to pretend we can.  We are not a 
24/7/365 effort.  We have about 20 core people, devoting anywhere from 1/64th 
to all to all of their time, and we are split between many timezones.  
Appliances require almost centralized control to deliver on their promises, 
its just not something a pokey open source project can do without significant 
people and funding.  

We can continue to be responsive to user suggestions, complaints, questions, 
and praise - we are a long way from the 1st release of this tool and there 
has been significant upward progress.  As you note, It is a tool like a 
hammer, you use it to solve a task.  There are many forms of hammers - lets 
go back to imagining the manual version, not the hydraulically operated kind. 
 

One my of my previous notes made reference to 'sysadmin 101'.  What follows 
is not meant to be an elitist statement: not everyone can be a sysadmin.  The 
world needs scientists, sysadmins, and people to set up pins in a bowling 
alley.  If maintenance of the machine is too hard for one person to manage - 
finding someone else who can assist is the best course of action.  Someone 
who knows how to be a sysadmin can set up automated monitoring and 
maintenance routines - this is their job after all.  They don't log on to the 
machine 2 times a day to apply patches, that would be ludicrous.  They do 
watch security lists, react when needed, and trust that automated methods are 
doing what they need to be doing.  There needs to be a better range of care 
between 'never patch since its an appliance' and 'patch hourly', and it is 
possible to strike a balance.  

The proper answer, that I am going to read into from your mail below, is that 
you need to sit down and talk with your network security and systems 
administration people about reaching a better way to handle the care and 
feeding of this machine.  

 - Perhaps the answer is 'you shouldn't use it', and maybe that is best.  If 
we look at other servers on a campus (DNS, Mail, OSG Compute nodes) they all 
have an administrator that need to grease the gears from time to time.  If 
the perfSONAR node is treated in a different manner because the word 
'appliance' was associated with it, that needs to change toward a model where 
its a server like the others.  The number of users of perfSONAR is not as 
important to us as the value people see in using it along with the ability 
they possess to maintain it.  

 - Perhaps the answer will be 'this machine increases the value of CMS 
science - so let us help you maintain it'.  Cyberinfrastructure matters to 
everyone, not just one overworked physicist.  If there is not 
campus/laboratory buy-in, things are going to fail.  It may be the case your 
local support staff (who really are helpful people - science and networking 
do not need to have an adversarial relationship) can assist.  Maybe it means 
integrating the machine into a CFEngine/Puppet/etc. system.  Maybe it means 
moving it out of your facility to the border of campus.  Maybe it means 
reducing the number of distributed machines from many to 1 - there are lots 
of answers.  I don't have these, your local support staff will.  

The networking staff at Brown U are very reasonable, and I have worked with 
them (and you) on several issues over the years.  If you would like someone 
from the perfSONAR project to help you make the case for this tool, we would 
be happy to do so (and that goes for anyone else that is reading this - all 
700 of you).  We make a crappy 'appliance', which is true, we do however want 
to try to make a useful tool that doesn't ruin someone's Friday.  

I hope this helps you and others in a similar situation;

Thanks;

-jason

On Oct 2, 2014, at 8:19 AM, Stefan Piperov 
<>
 wrote:

> On Wed, 1 Oct 2014, Jason Zurawski wrote:
> 
>> - As a P.S. to the previous bullet - perfSONAR is not an appliance...
> 
> Jason, are you not afraid that a statement like this will push away many 
> users? In our collaboration (CMS) perfSONAR was recommended as a _tool_ for 
> diagnosing network problems. A (good) tool normally does not require 
> maintenance or babysitting.
> 
> If I am to spend any significant amount of time (like patching the system 
> twice per day, as suggested in one of the responses), I'd rather not use 
> perfSONAR at all.
> 
> My server has been hacked already twice, which puts me in a really bad 
> situation in relation to the network security people.
> Plus the machine was found 'frozen' a couple of more times during this last 
> year that I have uesd perfSONAR.
> Quite disappointing.
> 
> Regards,
> Stefan.