The PPS Middleware Pilot Services

The new PPS access model is based on the concept of pilot or experimental services. A pilot is a highly specialized workspace set-up upon demand of classes of users willing to test a particular new grid feature, customised according to user requirements. The users of a pilot service receive direct support by middleware developers, testers, operations experts and service administrators for the completion of their use cases.

As a positive side-effect on the release process, an appropriate use of pilot services can lead to a ~30% reduction of the overall time-to-production of a new service/feature (see picture below).

The new model was applied for the first time on summer 2008 to test the gLite CREAM (Computing Resource Execution And Management) Computing Element, ) and the related submission add-ons to the gLite Workload Management System.

During the first phase of the pilot, closed in September, the Alice virtual organization did intense submission testing in production conditions. As a result they decided to base their default submission model on CREAM and to keep lcg-CEs as fallback solution. A second phase of the pilot started in October. In this phase CMS will try CREAM in production conditions using the gLite WMS-based submission method.

Users willing to request a pilot service should contact the PPS Support e-mail list

Live pilot services

• Cream CE
• VOMS
• Site Central Authorization Service (SCAS)

The template used for new pilot home pages is PpsPilotTemplate. Any changes made to the template will only influence new pages.

Closed pilot services

• SLC5 Worker Nodes
• WMS 3.1