Accounting Policies

1
Accounting Policies

• eIRG meeting
• Amsterdam. May 13 2005
• Kors Bos
• NIKHEF, Amsterdam

2
Pre-cursor

• No question marks in text there are only
  questions
• Talk freely, use your imagination
• We should come out with a line of thought not
  with ready solutions
• Will translate in a paragraph in the White Paper
• May propose other things meeting, workshop, task
  force, research proposal

3
Solutions exist
Simpler than grids Big money behind it But we
must understand
4
Scope

• In Europe
• But many projects are bigger
• For Science
• But with industrial strength
• Cannot forget eBusines, eGovernment, eHealth
• Grids
• Data grids/ computational/ instrumental/
• Virtual Organisations (VO)
• Groups/ Individuals

5
What should be accounted

• Processing power
• Normalisation for speed/type/
• Storage
• Disk, Tape, other
• Normalisation for speed/type/redundancy
• Transfer
• Network, interface,switches
• Normalisation for bandwidth/redundancy/quality
• Housing
• Power, cooling, floorspace, maintenance
• Manpower

6
Post-factum or Pro-active

• Post-factum (portable phone with subscription)
• Report frequency hour/day/week/month
• Easier, based on logs
• Pro-active (portable phone with pre-paid cards)
• Checking frequency /session, /job, /second
• Abort policy immedeately, after the job/session
• Serious overhead

7
Pro-active accounting
advantage fairdisadvantage many interactions
Grid bank
site
site
How much do we want to invest Same schema
everywhere
8
Budgeting

• Reservation
• How to request credit for resources
• Granularity user/group/VO
• Update frequency /day, /week, /month, /project
• Publication
• How to publish credits for resources
• Granularity as above, per site/country/region
• Reservation period
• Non-used credits
• Also pay when no-show (like airplane seats)
• Pay less when no-show
• Units
• kSI2k, TB, sec

9
Controlled or free economy

• Controlled
• Simple metric, the same everywhere
• All cycles and storage same price everywhere
• Easy billing within project or VO
• Some centres may have prices already
• Free
• Each site may publish its own prices
• Healthy competition, industrial model
• Exchange point Grid bank needed

10
Trusted party

• Who holds the accounting data
• Project or VO?
• Grid Operation Center
• Regional Operation Center
• Sites
• But
• There are (too) many VOs
• VOs may cheat
• Independent exchange point Grid bank needed?

11
Legal issues

• What may be contained in accounting records
• VO name, user name it crosses borders
• Resources centers have their own rules
• Countries may have their own legislation
• How long may accounting records be kept
• traffic data retention initiatives
• Liability
• Extra-territorial US, China, satelites
• Diplomatic immunity CERN, ESA

12
Dispute resolution

• Grid high court or national (EU) legislation
• VO internal MoUs with resource holders
• Supra VO Higgs discovery vs tsunami
• Blacklists users, groups, VOs, countries
• Unpayed bills
• Exchange rates
• Do we nee accountants