The production deployment of IPv6 on WLCG

The world is rapidly running out of IPv4 addresses; the number of IPv6 end systems connected to the internet is increasing; WLCG and the LHC experiments may soon have access to worker nodes and/or virtual machines (VMs) possessing only an IPv6 routable address. The HEPiX IPv6 Working Group has been investigating, testing and planning for dual-stack services on WLCG for several years. Following feedback from our working group, many of the storage technologies in use on WLCG have recently been made IPv6-capable. This paper presents the IPv6 requirements, tests and plans of the LHC experiments together with the tests performed on the group\u27s IPv6 test-bed. This is primarily aimed at IPv6-only worker nodes or VMs accessing several different implementations of a global dual-stack federated storage service. Finally the plans for deployment of production dual-stack WLCG services are presented

Exercise in patients with Type 2 diabetes: Facilitators and barriers - A qualitative study

Introduction: Diabetes is a major noncommunicable disease affecting more than 65 million Indians. Although treatment algorithms suggest lifestyle measures (diet and exercise) along with medications data regarding adherence to exercise as well as facilitators and barriers to the practice of physical activity in such patients are limited. Hence, this qualitative study was conducted. Objectives: The objective of this study is to describe the factors which (1) Facilitated and (2) hindered the practice of regular exercise in patients with Type 2 diabetes. Methodology: The study was conducted on 13 diabetic patients admitted to a tertiary care center in Bengaluru - St. John's Medical College Hospital, to explore factors that acted as facilitators and barriers to physical activity. Data saturation with the coded themes was achieved on interviewing 13 patients, after which, thematic analysis was done, and final themes reported. Results: The age of the study participants (7 males, 6 females) ranged from 40 to 80 years. Among those who did exercise, factors such as awareness regarding the benefits of exercise and complications linked with diabetes, positive family support, and emphasis by nursing staff emerged as facilitators. Lack of time, obligations to others, inability to link exercise with blood sugar control, lack of perception of obesity as a health issue, inadequate emphasis by physicians, social/cultural issues, lack of infrastructure, and physical restriction were the factors that acted as barriers to physical activity. In addition to the above, a clear lack of adherence to standard guidelines, while advising patients by physicians was also noted. Conclusion: A comprehensive approach by both doctors and nurses, based on standard guidelines, could help in implementing adherence to exercise in patients with diabetes

Actinomycosis in urachal remnants: A rare cause of pseudotumor

Actinomycosis is a chronic inflammatory condition caused by Actinomyces israeli, a gram positive anaerobic bacterium. It can have a variety of clinical manifestations and can mimic a malignancy. We present one such case of urachal actinomycosis that mimicked a tumor. A 28-year-old man presented with abdominal pain of 20 days duration. Per abdominal palpation revealed a firm mass with ill-defined borders in the suprapubic region. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging scans of the pelvis showed an irregular lesion in the urinary bladder extending to the umbilicus, giving the impression of urachal remnants with inflammation. Peroperatively, an irregular, hard mass measuring 6 x 5 cm, involving the anterior and posterior bladder walls, the appendix, the terminal ileum and sigmoid colon, was seen, which was suspicious for a malignancy. Frozen sections from the mass showed extensive inflammation and a florid fibroblastic proliferation, giving the impression of an inflammatory pseudotumor. The tissue was extensively sampled for paraffin sections and only one of them revealed a colony of Gram, PAS and GMS- positive organisms, conclusive for Actinomycosis. It is important to be aware of this uncommon, yet significant, presentation of a common infectious disease in order to avoid misdiagnosis and over-treatment as a malignancy

Deployment of IPv6-only CPU resources at WLCG sites

The fraction of Internet traffic carried over IPv6 continues to grow rapidly. IPv6 support from network hardware vendors and carriers is pervasive and becoming mature. A network infrastructure upgrade often offers sites an excellent window of opportunity to configure and enable IPv6. There is a significant overhead when setting up and maintaining dual-stack machines, so where possible sites would like to upgrade their services directly to IPv6 only. In doing so, they are also expediting the transition process towards its desired completion. While the LHC experiments accept there is a need to move to IPv6, it is currently not directly affecting their work. Sites are unwilling to upgrade if they will be unable to run LHC experiment workflows. This has resulted in a very slow uptake of IPv6 from WLCG sites. For several years the HEPiX IPv6 Working Group has been testing a range of WLCG services to ensure they are IPv6 compliant. Several sites are now running many of their services as dual-stack. The working group, driven by the requirements of the LHC VOs to be able to use IPv6-only opportunistic resources, continues to encourage wider deployment of dual-stack services to make the use of such IPv6-only clients viable. This paper presents the working group’s plan and progress so far to allow sites to deploy IPv6-only CPU resources. This includes making experiment central services dual-stack as well as a number of storage services. The monitoring, accounting and information services that are used by jobs also need to be upgraded. Finally the VO testing that has taken place on hosts connected via IPv6-only is reported

IPv6 Security

IPv4 network addresses are running out and the deployment of IPv6 networking in many places is now well underway. Following the work of the HEPiX IPv6 Working Group, a growing number of sites in the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (WLCG) are deploying dual-stack IPv6/IPv4 services. The aim of this is to support the use of IPv6-only clients, i.e. worker nodes, virtual machines or containers. The IPv6 networking protocols while they do contain features aimed at improving security also bring new challenges for operational IT security. The lack of maturity of IPv6 implementations together with the increased complexity of some of the protocol standards raise many new issues for operational security teams. The HEPiX IPv6 Working Group is producing guidance on best practices in this area. This paper considers some of the security concerns for WLCG in an IPv6 world and presents the HEPiX IPv6 working group guidance for the system administrators who manage IT services on the WLCG distributed infrastructure, for their related site security and networking teams and for developers and software engineers working on WLCG applications