TERENA Technical Committee Meeting
5 Nov 2014

Minutes: Licia Florio

Agenda

Participants

Valter North (VN)

David Groep (DG)

Peter Schober (PSc)

Vincente Goyanes (VG)

Yannis Mitsos (YM)

Valentino Cavalli (VC)

Licia Florio (LC)

John Dyer (JD)

Peter Szegedi (PSz)

Nicole Harris (NH)

Alessandra Scicchitano (AS)

Apologies

Laura Durnford (LD)

Rob Evans (RE)

Minutes

1.   Welcome and agenda bashing

VN welcomed the participants. The agenda was approved.

2.   Approval of Minutes

The minutes of last meeting were approved. The updated list of actions is shown below.

1.   (Future) Services

1.1    TCS New Service (DigiCert) – Alessandra Scicchitano

AS gave an update on the status of the new service, which will be delivered by DigiCert. The new service is more expensive than the old one. It will includes EV certificates as part of the contract (this was not covered in the contract with COMODO, although they were provided). VC noted that the board approved the proposed new service cost.

The contract is under negotiation; VC felt that the green light from the board will speed up the negotiation process. AS noted that most of the issues have been clarified, so she expect the contract to be ready for the signature fairly soon.

Most of the NRENs have already accepted the proposed costs; Malta and Cyprus felt the increased cost is not advantageous for small countries. The board however felt this was not an issue to require a change to the overall business model of TCS at this point in time.

AS explain that the service will be delivered according in three different phases:

-       Phase1: testing limited to a group of experts to check server and personal certs. No charging related for that

-       Phase2: bigger group to test the APIs etc; no charging for that

-       Phase3: all NRENs will be invited to use/test the service but a charge will apply.

The new TCS will start officially on 1^st July 2015 (the contract with COMODO ends in June 2015).

There are no precise timelines, in relation to the phases. The target is to sign the contract by end of November, therefore phase 1 could start as early as beginning of December.

Action: AS to invite YM and SP for phase 2.

1.2    TCS COMODO - Nicole Harris

NH reported on the introduction on SHA2, which is now available on all TERENA sub-CAs.  For more information please refer to the report circulated to the TTC list. It will still be possible to issue SHA1 certificates. VN noted that not all systems will use SHA2 (i.e. Windows 7 will still use SHA1), so users should be aware of that. SHA1 certs are still available via COMODO.

NH noted a discussion with COMODO should take place in the next 6 months to ensure COMODO is clear on what they are expected to offer after the contract ends.

1.3    TF-CSIRT Membership - Nicole Harris

NH reported on TF-CSIRT membership model. TF-CSIRT is a rather different TF compared to the others, not only regarding the size but also regarding the participation.

The re-chartering in 2012 introduced the concept of  TF-CSIRT membership to bring the task force closer with the security services associated to it, namely TRANSIT and Trusted Introducer (TI).  The revision of the proposed model that took place in 2013 showed a misalignment between Trusted Introducer as a service and TF-CSIRT as a membership organisation. NH noted that currently only members of  TI can become members of TF-CSIRT; however only full member (accredited CSIRTS) do pay for TI, whilst the liaison members (aka listed CSIRTS) do not.

NH also noted that GEANT project, as for all TERENA’s TFs, covers the cost for the secretary and occasionally the additional meeting costs that cannot be covered by the host.

In 2014 the new TI service has been re-procured which resulted in higher costs with the same providers. This cause some unhappiness with some of the paying members.

The TF-CSIRT steering committee has looked at different ways to ensure the sustainability of the TF. Three main recommendations are being put forward for the next TF-CSIRT meeting:

• • continue to be funded as normal under the GN4 project as long as it is viable.  It is however necessary to ensure the members are aware of this reliance and that with any project funding, long-term sustainability could be an issue. 
  • an increase in Trusted Introducer fees takes account of increasing the reserve held at TERENA in order to allow for any unusual issues or requests that might impact on our ability to run any given TF-CSIRT event.   
  • members first be consulted on whether they wish to maintain the status quo in terms to approaches to charges within the TF-CSIRT environment, or whether they wish to consider an alternative model (e.g. some charges for listing, some event fees etc.).  It is recommended that the accreditation fee should be increased to 1200 euros per annum in this model, which is a significant increase.  Charges would be introduced from September 2015.

More details can be found in the paper circulate to the TTC.

1.4    Greenhouse Project – Nicole Harris

NH reported on the greenhouse idea, to offer a software conservatory house approach. The idea was already presented in 2013, when a wiki space and a mailing list were created. The work has not progressed during this year due to the other commitments and due to the difficulty to scope the area, although discussion kept on-going. NH gave a presentation about this at the latest NORDUNET conference.

The greenhouse concept means different things to different people – it needs to clarify what the Amsterdam office really can do, draft an initial assessment approach and proceed with a full risk assessment.

LF noted that the PDOs will prepare a document for the management team with recommendations on possible way forwards. The document will cover the following areas:

• • assessments on the software that could benefit from this;
  • assessments on the financial aspects, (i.e. possible issues, accepting funding from non-members, and so on);
  • talk to organisations that operate in this area to better understand the space ;
  • consider a role where the GÉANT Association does not actually implement a framework but stimulates its implementation elsewhere.
  • considerations on IPR and licences

The TTC strongly supported the idea and encouraged the Amsterdam office to go ahead.

ACTION: LF to report about this at the next TTC.

1.5    OpenCloudMesh – Peter Szgedi

PS reported that OwnCloud is being more and more used by our community, also thanks to the framework agreement negotiated by TERENA. Building on this, OwnCloud is working on OpenCloudMesh, a protocol to connect the various OwnCloud instances. The protocol would be open to support other cloud instances as well. The goal is to enable real-time file sharing among users in different domain. The benefit for the users would be they can work on a file as if it were their own. The idea of OpenCloudMesh was well received and it will be pursed by creating a consortium of interested NRENs to work a prototype and  hopefully an open standard.

The work has been organised on two tracks: on one side use-cases will be collected to explain the benefits of OwnCloudMesh and to scope the work; and on the other hand there is a more administrative discussion on how to create the team to work on the specs (which would fit well into the Greenhouse concepts). Further discussion is expected to take place at the next TF-MSP. More details can be provided at a later stage.  

2.   Updates on Task Forces/SIGs

2.1   TF-WebRTF - Peter Szgedi

PS reported on the goals of the TF. He noted there will be a WebRTF service under GN4, so the TF will also expose the results of GEANT.

The TF was approved with no changes.

2.2   TF-MNM - Nicole Harris

The discussion for the re-charting has started. The aim is to look at various mobility issues as well as to find ways to bring the global eduroam team close to TF-MNM. There is an early draft, but the final preparation will take place in December. The TTC will be asked to approve the charter after the December meeting.

NH also noted that it is not sure whether the current chair, Klaas Wierenga, will continue to lead the group (changes in his role within his organisation may make it hard)

2.3   TF-NOC - Peter Szgedi

PS reported on the TF-NOC, which operates like a SIG. Discussion is ongoing to  define a model that TF-NOC should follow after the rechartering (due in April 2015). The idea is to add some training for NREN NOC staff to bring them up to a desired level (details still to be defined).  The discussion also covers a certification model, similar to TF-CSIRT and a training model similar to TRANSIT. YM suggested that NRENs  could approach the universities NOC to train their NOC team.

The TTC welcomed the idea of the training/sharing knowledge approach being discussed by the TF-NOC group.

2.4    TF-MSP – John Dyer

JD reported on the TF-MSP, the TF that caters for NRENs middle managers. The TF has a strong focus on business models, in various areas, such as cloud and mobility.

JD also reported on the work done by Christian Gijtenbeek to display the services that NRENs offer. The service, still under development, is available at:

https://compendium.terena.org/reports/nrens_services

3.   TTC Update

A round table of the TTC members followed.

a.     David Groep

DG reported that e-Infrastructures (IGTF, EGI, PRACE etc) have agreed to focus their efforts on policy negotiation. DG is being promoting federated access among the eScience community for years. Possibly as result of his effort, EGI has decided to use eduGAIN to access a platform to run arbitrary usage ops for the long tail of science.  The timeframe is very tight, they expect a prototype in the next two months.

DG said to be ery interested in the TF-NOC type of activities and he will try and make sure that the same type of service is offered throughout Europe

Action: DG to report on the EGI pilot to ensure eduGAIN team is in the loop.

b.     Peter Schober

PSc  reported that the trend in the federated access area in HE is to focus on researcher requirements to increase the participation of institutions in eduGAIN. They are discovering some issues with the data protection.  

PSc is also actively working on SCHAC, trying to clean the schema.

To that extend, LF noted that there are discussions in the US to find a more permanent home for eduPerson and that REFEDS is being considered. If this were to happen, we could look at a global way to manage schema.

c.     Vicente Goyanes

VG reported that he is working on two main areas:

• conferencing tools to address the demand from professors to engage with students;
• and media distribution, to address the demand for recording lectures and to create short videos.

To address the latter point, his university tested dual video content to be published online (i.e. youtube).  Professors are encouraged to publish their recording, although the final decision rests with the professors. Vicente reported briefly on translectures.eu project and on the test to connect it with PuMuKit (used for OER).  The resulting tool could be used for the TERENA OER project to facilitate the search and find of content.

d.     Yannis Mitsos

YM reported on the experience in deploying and operating IaaS Services. The main reasons for developing in house solutions was to address the demand of institutions to outsource services. With the hype of clouds small institutions in particularly saw an opportunity to migrated services to the cloud. When they started there were no commercial products that would satisfy their requirements.

The first service deployed is ViMA a virtual machine service that use Google ganeti; GRNET has also contribute software to that. ViMA is typically used by library, and research institutions.
The other service is Okeanos that offers both computational and storage services. Recently they disabled the ability for end-users to create VMs; VMs are now allocated to projects. Okeanos is typically used by a students, teachers and researchers.

Building cloud services is expensive; once built the operations are manpower consuming. Rough calculations indicate that the cost for a VM is about 300 eur per year, which is comparable to what is available on the market.

NRENs have embraced cloud computing a lot,  but it is hard to say whether this model is better than buying similar services from the market (assuming services that can meet the requirements are available on the market).

YM said GRNET would be interested in some synergies with, for instance NORDUNET to cluster okeanos servers in Iceland for instance. The GEANT testbed as a service would be looking at resources to work with, so okeanos could be a good candidate.

e. Valter Nordh

Valter reported on the current main areas of work in Sunet:

• remote degrees – The goal is for Swedish universities to allow for distance degrees. The main issue at the moment is to define ways to enrol student remotely and to validate the identity of the students to avoid fraude.
• backup as a service  - SUNET procured BaaS for unit in Sweden.
• SUNET are offering projectplace.com as a service, an online tool for managing time, deadlines, work tasks, teams and people
•  some of universities are looking for network as a service, asking SUNET to run the firewall and routers. Sunet is not sure as to whether they will offer this service in the future.

4.   Updates on Global Initiatives

4.1   GLIF Update - Peter Szegedi 

PS reported on the last GLIF meeting held in New Zealand.

During this meeting the demonstrations took place after each session, which went very well (instead of demonstrations during the evening). Community is interested, lively discussions take place at each meeting and many technical challenges are addressed.

PS note that there is some reserve available for GLIF budget to make it possible for GLIF to run smoothly until 2016.

4.2   REFEDS Update - Licia Florio 

LF reported on the latest REFEDS meeting hosted during the I2 technology exchange in the US. She said the meeting was well attending (about 80 people) and there was good discussion.

REFDS work is progressing according to the workplan. Some areas, such as the work on entity categories, are progressing very well.  Reaching consensus has proven to be very hard and time consuming even when a well-defined process is in place.

Discussion is ongoing with the REFEDS SC to review the sponsorship model and to follow the GLIF model. Currently sponsors are free to offer anything they like.

LF noted the REFEDS has at this point in time a very limited reserve to date; therefore sponsorship is critical to REFEDS success.

5.   Next TTC meeting and Closing Remarks

Provisional date on 10Feb to be confirmed.

Action: VN asked to have an agenda item to start the preparation for the TAC.

VN noted he liked to hear an updated from the TTC; he suggested to include this as a regular item on the agenda. Vicente offered to give a more extensive presentation.

Action: LF to contact Rob to ask him for an overview at the next TTC.

6. Summary of the Actions