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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Official Messages
Forum: We're Moving to Krembil Research Institute!
Thread: krembil migration - a Disaster |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 17
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TPCBF
Master Cruncher USA Joined: Jan 2, 2011 Post Count: 1932 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Frankly, I don't know why IBM just didn't donate the servers and WCG related hardware, and transport it to it's new data center. It would have been a much shorter, and smoother, process that wouldn't be going on for almost 5 months. There was no need to reinvent the wheel for this transition, or take on the risks which that involves.. Well, first and foremost, because about a year before the announcement of the transition to Krembil, under IBM's thumb, WCG was transitioned from "real iron" to "the cloud".. At least that was the reason given when the WCG was shutdown, though only for a few days.Now it seems the project was moved again from the cloud back to real hardware. And that the scale of the project was grossly underestimated. As I mentioned before, beside that we are now 4 1/2 months into a scheduled 2 months transition, there were pretty much another 5 months, from the announcement of the shift until the shutdown to start the migration. And that time could have been used to get as much knowledge and information about the hardware and software requirements, to have the adequate resources in place at the start of the migration. . But instead, at least that what it looks going by the scant info provided, after the physical data (where the vast amount is the current and historical project data) was transferred, a lot of the issues that come up because of missing or insufficient preparation because things are being made up "on the fly"... Granted, the team at Krembil might have never been in such a situation and has to learn as "they go along" but for us users, it doesn't look good for the reliability of the WCG project in the long run.. Ralf  |
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1671 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Since I was (and still am) business travelling during the last two weeks, I was not able to take a look on the forum.
----------------------------------------I can understand the "complaint" even we are volunteers; the only one to have to complain should be the scientists. I know that over the last 30 years, everybody become the inaccurate feeling that IT is easy. Nonetheless, IT is NOT easy . I never saw the full architecture of the WCG platform: HW as well as SW. Nevertheless, I can imagine its degree of complexity and sophistication. Moving such a platform, even upgrading / changing the used components, can cause a lot of troubles because of numerous dependencies. You can try to anticipate a lot but at the end of the day, you will have to face unexpected (and not really foreseeable) issues. The difficulties the new team experience since the last 6 months finally show us what a wonder the IBM's tech team made day after day over 15 years long for securing WCG operation. Maybe some of the tricks they used are just annoying today within a different operational context. I would like to have sufficient time available for being able to directly help the new team. I suppose several of us with the necessary technical and operational background would like to do the same. WCG is worth it. As I know, IBM did never officially communicate regarding its disengagement of supporting WCG. Based on my experience by global acting companies, I suppose that some "bean counters" in some strategic positions used WCG for justifying some budget reductions and for earning some bonus (because they reduced the costs). At the WCG beginning, IBM was a server hardware manufacturer, an operating system and infrastructure software component editor, and a service provider. Today, after many things have been stopped or moved to Lenovo, we do not know exactly what IBM core business is (excepted money making). I guess that in the early years, WCG was from interest for challenging new approaches, new software releases, new hardware components as well as new operational designs. WCG represents in terms of communication and data volumes as well as in terms of required storage space and expected availability a useful benchmark platform. Maybe WCG was not anymore useful for IBM. However, this disengagement creates finally a significant image damage within the community. Being realistic, finally only very few people are aware about this situation and the impact of this decision and it will not ruin IBM's overall reputation. Summarizing with few words: the bean counter's strategy succeeded  My best wishes to Igor and his team. We support you, some of us are willing to help (e.g. forum moderation) beside contribution. You can count with us. Cheers, Yves |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7579 Status: Recently Active Project Badges:
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My best wishes to Igor and his team. We support you, some of us are willing to help (e.g. forum moderation) beside contribution. You can count with us. Maybe, once they get up and running with steady production, they can resurrect the old "Community Advisor" designation with regard to forum moderators. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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Yavanius
Senior Cruncher Antarctica Joined: Jan 21, 2015 Post Count: 191 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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It seems IBM has moved to solutions. They still have machines, but it's high-grade stuff. They probably got pushed out out of the low end market by Dell and HP. Dell has taken over where there use to be HP and IBM machines...although, you could tell those that were still IBM were aging...then again, IBM was never really known for aesthetics so....
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GolfSierra
Cruncher Joined: Jul 31, 2021 Post Count: 17 Status: Offline |
From the announcements of the WCG staff you can see, that they were overwhelmed by the problems they encountered.
OK, but why says the main page "Migration completed" - which only is true for the web site and social media - when the main reason that people come here - crunching WUs - is not fully available yet?  Seems to me that the WCG staff was focussing on web, twitter, youtube and oll the other fancy bling bling stuff instead of providing a functional platform for crunching. This for shure hat pi*** off many people and the the longer this struggle continues the more people turn their backs on WCG. Again, I suggest to start a crowd funding campaign for raising money in order to pay for professional IT help instead of tinkering with WCG for the next months to come. |
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Bobzilla
Cruncher Joined: May 31, 2020 Post Count: 31 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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If I had a beer for every time they announce startup is coming soon, I would be an alcoholic.
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Vester
Senior Cruncher USA Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 325 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Judging by the slow, extended hour and forty-five-minute download of ARP files to get ten tasks yesterday, there is a bottleneck on their end. I have a gigabit connection, but Task Manager indicated 17Mbps peak download speed.
----------------------------------------Progress, not perfection.  |
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