To: ganderso@MIT.EDU
Cc: longjobs@MIT.EDU, vkumar@MIT.EDU
Subject: Status of Longjobs proejct
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 08:44:41 EDT
From: "Naomi B. Schmidt" <nschmidt@MIT.EDU>


Hello Greg -

Back in January, 1996, you drafted a charter for a Long Jobs
Discovery Team.  The effort that was taking place at that time
(Team members were Matt Braun, Carla Fermann, and Tom Coppeto. 
Team sponsor was Greg Jackson, Academic Computing Director)
became moribund as varioius participants left the Institute or
became diverted to other projects.

For the past couple of months, a group of us (Mike Barker, Bob
Basch, Jonathon Weiss, Bill Cattey, and myself) have been meeting
to talk about a new model for delivering this service.  Bob has
been working out a design with input from others and has now
acquired three SPARCclassics to build a "toy" prototype.  He hopes
to have this done in "draft" stage by early November, at which
time we would want to bring in Consulting and TPS folks for
suggestions on improvement re user interface.  We are talking
about possibly piloting this service in 'beta' form during IAP and
Spring semester, using two SPARC5's and maybe an SGI O2.

I think that the time has come to officially designate this as a
Discovery project.  Once Bob's prototype using SPARCclassics has
been built, that's probably the time to make a formal
recommendation as to whether or not to move it into Delivery.

We haven't designated a formal Team Leader for this project -
probably a logical person to put down would be either Mike Barker
or myself - we'll decide between the two of us.  Vijay is the
logical sponsor.

Here is the text of your draft charter, as ammended to be up to
date:

Long  Jobs on Athena

Description of the problem:

	In the current Athena environment long-running jobs
submitted by users mean that the workstation is tied-up for the
length of that job.  Given the increasing demands for available
Athena workstations, especially at the end of the academic term, a
need has been identified to offer a long job service in the Athena
environment.  This is an important enhancement to the Athena
environment and will provide a greater range of options for long
jobs.

Value added to the Athena environement:

	The service value of a long jobs facility would be better
performance for those jobs and greater satisfaction for the user
submitting the long job.  The value added for the remainder of the
community would be that the workstation where the job was submitted
would then be available for other uses.

The Discovery effort:

	The Long Jobs Discovery team will build upon the work
already accomplished during previous incarnations of this project,
and it will further that work through proposal of a recommended
option to solve the problem.  

	The team will frame ongoing, operational issues such as
implications for the service and support processes, measurement
and evaluation of the service, and design proposals and estimates
for delivery of this service.  

Discovery Logistics:  Team and Timeframe

	The Long Jobs Discovery team will be led by ***.  Team
members will be Robert Basch, Jonathon Weiss, Mike Barker, and
Naomi Schmidt.  Team sponsor will be Vijay Kumar, Academic
Computing Director.  Other members of the MIT community will be
involved as needed for user experience, technical expertise, or
evaluation of information.  

Please let me know if I've left anything out.

			Naomi