37 on-site and 17 remote participants attended the 20th SIG-NOC meeting on 7-8 May in Helsinki, Finland kindly hosted by CSC/Funet. During the two-day event, attendees took part in interesting presentations and discussions regarding key topics shaping the landscape of SOC/NOC operations.
The first day commenced with a warm welcome from Juha Oinonen (CSC/Funet), and the first session started with focusing on data & non-data. Juha Törnroos (CSC/Funet) kicked it off with a talk on data lakes in data centres operations and monitoring object-storage services. He explained what object storage services are, what they are used for, how they are connected to the network and, how they are monitored.
Next, Kurosh Bozorgebrahimi (Sikt) gave a short introduction on fiber-based sensing technologies and presented Sikt’s fiber sensing activities in the lab and field. The first session ended with Rasmus Lund (NORDUnet) presenting some interesting SOP methods and results from live trials conducted by NORDUnet.
After a discussion-filled coffee break, a panel focused on SOC and NOC boundaries started off session two. Ryan Richford (GÉANT) showcased what the GÉANT SOC is doing, how it is evolving, and the boundaries of responsibility. David Neller, Paul Knee, and Mark Worthington (Jisc) shared share their experiences on how Jisc grew to where they are today, the responsibilities of each team, as well as communication/separation of duties between teams. Wim Biemolt (SURF) gave an overview of SURFsoc and other security topics related to network activities at SURF.
The first day’s meeting wrapped up with flash talks from Dawn Hsu-hua Ng (GÉANT) on GÉANT’s Community Programme and the Community Hub at TNC24, and Juha Suhonen on FUNET’s NOC. The participants continued the evening with a private visit to Elisa’s Telephone Museum – one of the most significant museums in its sector even by international standards, kindly hosted by CSC/Funet. After, everyone shared an amazing dinner at Restaurant Mamma Rosa (with the meal sponsored by GÉANT and drinks by CSC/Funet) which provided the opportunity to network further and have valuable discussions.
The second day started off with the third session of the meeting – Monitoring and NOC life. Jonas Hangström (SUNET) of discussed the integration of network surveillance with Grafana, followed by Mick O’Donovann (HEAnet) sharing their automation journey. Morten Brekkevold (SIKT) shared an insightful perspective on the network state monitoring tool – ZINO 2.0.
Session four – Monitoring/NIS2, was kicked off with a presentation by Alfredo Funicello and Filippo Landini (GARR) on monitoring latency and jitter with Timemap. Next, enriching discussions took place after Urpo Kaila (CSC/Funet) and Alf Moens (GÉANT)’s presented on the NIS2 Directive – adapting to it and what it means for NOCs.
Lastly, Darren Clarke (GÉANT) ended the session with a flash talk on the challenges of migrating from one provider to another from a GOC perspective. The day ended with an evaluation of the meeting’s outcomes, and volunteers were sought for hosting the next SIG-NOC meeting in Q4 2024.
Throughout both days, attendees enjoyed networking opportunities and delicious meals at ‘The Plate’, Life Science Center Keileniemi’s own restaurant. A big thank you to all those who joined both in-person and online, and a special thanks to our colleagues at CSC/Funet who made all of this possible.
The slides of the presentations can be downloaded on the event page.
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About SIG-NOC
The Special Interest Group on Network Operations Centres (SIG-NOC) brings together NOC managers, developers, operators, controllers and project managers as well as network engineers involved in the integration and optimisation of NOC-specific tools, workflows and processes. To learn more about this group visit their page on the GÉANT Community page: https://community.geant.org/sig-noc/
