Experiences with the use of Open Source Software

Experiences with the use of Open Source Software in an Operational Environment Riga 07. 04. 2005 – Baltic IT&T Forum 2005 Roar Skålin Director of information technology, met. no

Norwegian Meteorological Institute – met. no • Responsible for meteorological observations and weather forecasts for Norway, the adjacent sea areas and Svalbard • HQ in Oslo, regional offices in Tromsø and Bergen • Three stations in the Arctic: Jan Mayen, Bear Island Hopen The meteorological station at Bear Island • Five airport offices • Staff: 465 • Operational production 24 hours a day, 365 days a year Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

The Meteorological Production Chain • Measurements of the state of the atmosphere (observations) • Global exchange of observations • Computer simulations of the future state of the atmosphere (forecast models • Interpretation by forecasters • Presentation and distribution Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

met. no Production Chain 1998 HPC System Cray Unicos Consortia SW Data archive Sgi Irix 3 rd party SW Message Switch Tandem In-house SW Control System Sgi Irix Consortia and In-house SW Distribution IBM Aix/SGI Irix OSS and In-house SW Data collection Aix/Windows 3 rd party and in-house SW Meteorological Workstation Irix/Windows In-house and 3 rd party SW Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Pros and Cons of Open Source Software + + Shorter ”mean-time-to-repair” Reduced investment and operating costs Attractive employer for IT-personnel In-house competence and eager employees – Migration cost and time – High degree of freedom – High dependence of in-house competence 0 Quality of software 0 Support of software Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Our Strategy • Standardisation of operating systems – Linux for meteorological production, visualisation and distribution, for research and for office support (when feasible) – MS Windows for administrative services, some observation systems and office support (when necessary) • Standard applications and development framework – Evaluate OSS and use OSS in combination with in-house, consortia and 3 rd party software when appropriate • Meteorological models – Consortia based software – Encourage OSS and insist on open standards • Administrative services and observation systems – 3 rd party software – Encourage OSS and insist on open standards Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Implementation and Migration • Architecture Thick Thin Thick Desktops Servers Production, Application, Databases Terminal, File • Duplication of all critical servers • Incremental process – Year 2000 issues – High cost systems – Other systems on demand or when upgrade is required Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

met. no Production Chain 2005 HPC System Linux Consortia SW Message Switch Linux OSS (met. no) Control System Linux Consortia, OSS and in-house SW Data collection Linux/Windows 3 rd party and in-house SW Data archive Linux 3 rd party SW Distribution Linux OSS and In-house SW Meteorological Workstation Linux In-house and OSS Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Examples of Open Source at met. no • • • OS: Linux, User Mode Linux (UML) Desktop: KDE Languages: gcc, Perl, Python, PHP Databases: My. SQL, Postgre. SQL Web publishing: Open. Interact Applications: Apache, Tomcat, Bind, Exim, Autofax, Open. LDAP, CUPS, Nagios Tools: Open. SSH, Open. SSL, SAMBA, Free. RADIUS Formats: Net. CDF, HDF, XML Middelware: Corba Configuration: cfengine, Kickstart Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Open Source contributions by met. no • • Web-based Help. Desk Web publishing system: wgen Meteorological Message Switch: Norcom Minor contributions to several OSS systems, most notably the web publishing system Open. Interact Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Competence • Use of OSS requires access to relevant competence: – system engineers with a genuine interest in OSS tools and high ability to continuous learning by doing – system developers with a basic understanding of both methodology and programming and a genuine interest in OSS • The management must – be able to trust an open community (rather than a commercial company) – have a basic understanding of OSS, including licences Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Economy • Cost of Migration – Total cost € 750 000 - work carried out by internal personnel – Most of the cost due to Y 2 K and other necessary upgrades • Cost of Operations – Annual maintenance cost (HW and OS) reduced by € 250 000 – Increased staff by one system engineer - Annual cost € 75 000 • Cost of Hardware – Cost per server down 80 - 95% since 1999 – Due to both lower HW cost and standardisation on Linux – # of servers increased by a factor of 10 with reduced budgets • Cost of Software – Overall budget reduced by some 20% – Still have licences for some of the main cost drivers: administrative systems, backup/archiving, Oracle, some Windows and Adobe Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Economy: Two examples • The message switch – – • Cost of of operations 1998: € 75 000 migration (developing a new system): € 75 000 purchasing new HW: € 7 000 operations 2005: ≈ € 0 The Oracle based climate database – – Cost of operations 1998: € 75 000 Internal investment in SW based on Oracle: 10 man-years Conclusion: Keep Oracle, move the system to Linux Cost of operations 2005: € 50 000 Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Security aspects of OSS • Availability – Use stable versions and User Mode Linux (UML) – Stability issues resolved by online documentation/newslists, help from development teams or locally produced patches – Fixes for problems related to incompatible software or unsupported software (missing drivers!) normally available from the net • Integrity – Prior to installing DMZs and UML, we had one occurrence of misuse of our Linux based ftp-server • Confidentiality – The software is open by definition – Not experienced any problems related to data Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Interoperability • Exchange of data within the meteorological community based on open formats such as HDF, Net. CDF, XML, GRIB • Linux network operating system has not caused any problems • For administrative systems, formats like doc, ppt and xls reduces flexibility – Standardised on one office system internally (currently Microsoft Office) – Must be able to receive these formats – Policy on not sending these formats unless requested by the receiver Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no

Conclusions • Use of OSS has resulted in – Reduced operating cost – High availability – Highly motivated personnel • In house competence has been highly beneficial and in some cases instrumental • The combination of – Using OSS in a standardisation process – Implementation on demand has reduced the cost and man-time of implementing the OSS strategy Norwegian Meteorological Institute met. no