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ASREN perfSONAR Workshop

Dates: 15 - 18 April 2019

Location: CNRST, Rabat, Morocco

The Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN), International Networks at Indiana University (IN@IU), and the Moroccan Academic and Research Wide Area Network (MARWAN) held a perfSONAR training workshop in Rabat, Morocco, from 15-18 April 2019.

What is perfSONAR?
perfSONAR is a network measurement toolkit designed to provide federated coverage of paths and help establish end-to-end usage expectations. There are 1000s of perfSONAR instances deployed worldwide (at the time of the workshop), many of which were available for open testing of key measures of network performance. This global infrastructure helps identify and isolate problems as they happened, making the role of supporting network users easier for engineering teams and increasing productivity when utilizing network resources.

Workshop Synopsis
This hands-on, perfSONAR-focused workshop aimed to create a pSConfig dashboard for use by ASREN and their member institutions. An understanding of network or system administration was required. During the course of the workshop, participants:

  • Assembled NUC7i3BNH small nodes for use in the workshop
  • Installed the perfSONAR Toolkit on the small nodes
  • Tested the nodes against one another on the local network
  • Prepared nodes for deployment at each participant’s home institution for use in a wider ASREN production monitoring dashboard
The skills learned during this course prepared workshop participants to plan and deploy their own perfSONAR meshes at their home institution or National Research and Education (NREN).

Target Audience
The workshop targeted Network and/or Systems Engineers with a desire to better monitor and understand network measurements.

Prerequisites
No previous knowledge of perfSONAR was required, however, the following proficiencies were of great benefit:

  • Knowledge of Linux command line environment (CentOS 7 was used in the workshop)
  • Basic knowledge of network setup on servers
Interested participants were advised to visit the perfSONAR website www.perfsonar.net.

Objectives

By the close of the workshop, participants were able to:

  • Have a decent knowledge of the perfSONAR toolkit and testing methodology
  • Install and deploy perfSONAR on their own
  • Understand the pSConfig package used for creating pS meshes for persistent testing over time

Instructors

Registration Fees: 200 EURO