# 20210701 EESSI update meeting

## Quick introduction by new people
- Ward Poelmans (VUB)
- Laura Redfern (Microsoft, HPC specialist)

## EESSI-related meetings in last month

## Progress update per EESSI layer
### Filesystem layer

- new multi-arch containers available through GitHub container registry
- container images should be removed from Docker Hub?
- + notification on EESSI mailing list + Slack

### Compatibility layer
- To solve the issue with the Github Action, let's go for the solution that provides a Prefix installation on ci.eessi-hpc.org.

### Software layer

- user-level CUDA driver update via `cuda-compat`
- Alan could use some help

## AWS/Azure update
- We bumped the limits on the number of cores that we can request in AWS.

## Azure sponsorship

- project approved by MS to provide $40k in Azure credits (through SURF)
- could be leveraged for
- build nodes
- GitHub Actions (CI stuff)

## Progress update: testing

- Caspar's PR for the GROMACS ReFrame test should be more or less ready:
https://github.com/EESSI/software-layer/pull/115
It's a very generic test, where a user just have to provide a few required parameters (e.g. number of tasks).
It would be nice if people can try it out, even on their local GROMACS installations.
- Christian: end result of Arm/AWS hackathon (https://a-hug.org/hackathons/aws-hackathon/ + https://github.com/arm-hpc-user-group/Cloud-HPC-Hackathon-2021) could be a nice set of ReFrame tests to play with...

## 2021.06 version of pilot repository

- Some PRs open that need to be finished and merged first
- If you want to help out with building software, let us know

## Infrastructure in AWS

- Terje ran into and solved a lot of issues with terraform, permissions, etc.
- Perhaps it's useful to share how all those issues have been solved and how we set up everything for other AWS users?
- Limits for total # vCPUs has been raised significantly
- We can now look into replicating things like the GROMACS scaling results posted in https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/hpc/gromacs-price-performance-optimizations-on-aws/

## Progress towards automating deployment of software installations

- Caspar: why does the Stratum 0 make the PR?
- This was mostly done because the machine that does this needs a Github token, and the Stratum 0 is a secure machine for storing this.
- Jörg: how we can ensure that no malicious stuff gets injected into the tarball on a build node?
- Hard to guarantee that this will be impossible, but we try to automate the builds by creating/destroying the build machines on the fly, to prevent human access as much as possible.

## Q&A

- Jörg went to an EOSC workshop, and thinks that EESSI could fit in well here.
Also Alan comments that it could be a good opportunity for EESSI to get funding.
There are several EOSC working groups already, but it's not clear if there's one for software.
https://eosc-portal.eu/eosc-working-groups