Unfortunately, the EUMETSAT side of the EWC experienced a service degradation last night 11.-12.04. 22:40 - 5:00 CET. This incident affected both cloud management functions and running workloads. Our infrastructure provider is currently investigating the root cause of the issue.

All functions should be nominal now.

To better assess the impacts, we would like to hear from you about any consequences the incident had on your use case. Please reach us via discussion platform, support, or email. We are grateful for your feedback!

We apologize for the inconvenience!

Our provider informed us that they had an internal service malfunction which has caused some of the virtual machines' (VM) file systems to change to a read-only mode at EUMETSAT EWC. The problem has been resolved, but some VMs may still be in a read-only state. In that case, we kindly ask that you reboot the VM to restore normal functionality.

The incident happened during the previous weekend (4-5 March).

We have checked some of the workloads and not hitting the problem so far. In order to understand the full impacts of the outage, we would like you to inform us if you are impacted.

EUMETSAT EWC infrastructure provider is announcing a priority maintenance window which is scheduled for today, February 6 from 22:00 CET until February 7 to 03:00 CET . During this period, temporary problems with deploying or changing any resources are expected. The work will not cause any impact for already deployed resources. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience and understanding.

We are updating the direct link configuration between EUMETSAT EWC infrastructure and data holdings. Because of that, we expect short interruptions in connection from EUMETSAT EWC infrastructure to EUMETSAT Data Store and in managing resources (e.g. deploying/removing new VMs) during 31 Jan - 1 Feb. Everything else should work nominally.

We are pleased to invite you to our new pilot EWC discussion platform on https://chat.europeanweather.cloud using the rocket.chat team chat system.

The platform is set up to facilitate collaboration and software development via online discussion. On the platform, you can freely discuss with other EWC users and the EWC Team from ECMWF and EUMETSAT. The platform can be used with a web browser or by a client. 

Users with Member and Cooperating State meteorological service email addresses can self-register by going to https://chat.europeanweather.cloud and selecting Register a new account. If you do not have an email account with a white-listed domain but would like to register, please raise a ticket in our Support portal with information on which tenancy you are using. You can find more documentation at: https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/EWCLOUDKB/Discussion+platform

For those with existing accounts on the EUMETSAT-only rocket chat used in the pilot phase, we encourage you to migrate as this service will likely be wound down in 2023.

We hope to see you there soon! 

We thank all presenters and participants for the successful workshop!

The presentations will be available to as links in the agenda.

Recording available at: http://s3.waw3-1.cloudferro.com/ewc-user-support-assets/2022-10-13-EWC-User-Workshop-recording.mp4 

Agenda / presentations

EUMETSAT has launched new annual research and development (R&D) calls to be conducted in European Weather Cloud (EWC).

Research and development (R&D) applications are open to researchers from any publically funded organisation in the EUMETSAT Member States. The applications should be submitted no later than 30 November 2022 for a project started in May 2023.

The resources granted are solely infrastructure and support in using it. The computing infrastructure is in EWC close to the EUMETSAT and ECMWF data holdings and includes virtual machines (VM), object storage, GPUs, and shared file system. The projects are expected to range from 50 to 100 vCPUs (cores), 400-800 GB of RAM, 50-100 TB of storage, and 4-8 vGPUs (1 vGPU = 1/8 of NVIDIA GPU RTX A6000) to run on EUMETSAT part of the EWC.

Please consult https://www.eumetsat.int/european-weather-cloud-research-development-call for more information and instructions to apply.

Note that EWC resources at ECMWF can also be applied as part of the ECMWF Special Projects.

We are pleased to announce a new edition of the European Weather Cloud User Workshop, jointly organised by ECMWF and EUMETSAT. The event will be completely virtual on 13 October 2022.

This workshop is open to Member and Co-operating States of EUMETSAT and ECMWF. If you meet the attendance criteria and would like to participate, we would kindly ask you to complete the registration form before 30 September.

As we are soon entering the operational phase, we will cover governance, access and operational aspects of usage. We will also give the floor to current pre-operational users with interesting use cases and discuss the plans for future evolution of the EWC. We will combine presentations from ECMWF, EUMETSAT, and Users, as well as interactive sessions for discussions, feedback, and exchange of ideas. The full programme will be made available closer to the event date.

We look forward to seeing you at the European Weather Cloud User Workshop!

Lately, the critical Apache Log4j vulnerability CVE-2021-44228 in the Apache Log4j library has been announced. (Please consult e.g. https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html for further information.)

We have checked our infrastructure components both manually and with a help of repository scanning tools. We are not aware of any EWC infrastructure component to be exposed.

However, we have not checked or scanned any workloads inside tenancies. Instead, we want to emphasize that tenants are responsible for their workloads, and each EWC tenant needs to check and update their services. You are advised to check your workload. You should be especially careful if you use any java-based web services such as GeoServer.

We are pleased to announce a new edition of the the European Weather Cloud User Workshop, jointly organised by ECMWF and EUMETSAT every 6 months. The event will be completely virtual and will be held split over two afternoons (Note that timings may vary slightly as the programme is finalised):

• 10 November 2021 13:30-16:00 CET
• 11 November 2021 13:30-16:00 CET

This workshop is open to Member and Co-operating States of EUMETSAT and ECMWF. If you meet the attendance criteria and would like to participate, we would kindly ask you to complete the registration form before 3 November.

As we are reaching the final stages of the pilot phase of this project, this workshop will provide an opportunity to come together to see what has been achieved, but also to look ahead at what is coming as we gradually move to an operational service. We will combine presentations from ECMWF, EUMETSAT and Users, as well as interactive sessions for discussions, feedback and exchange of ideas. The full programme will be made available shortly.

We would like take this opportunity to ask you for a few minutes of your time ahead of the workshop to tell us what you think, and what your experience has been so far with the European Weather Cloud. Your feedback will help us shape the service as we move towards the operational phase of the European Weather Cloud in 2022:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/EWC_pilot_survey

We look forward to seeing you at the European Weather Cloud User Workshop!

This is the next in the series of joint ECMWF / EUMETSAT workshops on the European Weather Cloud.

As in the earlier workshops, we will also share updates and experiences from use cases and ongoing developments.

As we progress towards an operational service, we would appreciate feedback from the community on the future data needs and expectations in operations.

This workshop will be virtual and only open to Member and Co-operating States.

We hope you and your colleagues will find this workshop interesting and useful and we look forward to your participation.

Registration and access details:

To participate in the event, please complete this short registration form by 25 April 2021.

Once registered you will receive an automatic acknowledgement, followed a few days later by an acceptance email once we have processed your request.

The Zoom Webinar link will be provided in a separate email communication.

Agenda outline

Webinar time: 0800 - 1400 UTC / 0900-1500 BST / 1000-1600 CEST / 1100-1700 EEST

This is the agenda for the webinar, note times below are in CEST

Live Questions: https://app.sli.do/event/rceb0ahf/live/questions

ECMWF and EUMETSAT regularly host joint online Member State User Workshops on the European Weather Cloud. The next workshop will be hosted by EUMETSAT and is planned for the 27 April 2021.

At this joint workshop we plan to address the following topics:

• Active case studies, highlighting areas of exploration
• Overview of technical developments
• A timeline towards an operational service
• Q&A session

The event will be held using Zoom Webinar. A detailed agenda and joining instructions will follow in due course. In the meantime, we kindly ask you to reserve this date in your calendar.

As part of the European Weather Cloud pilot project, EUMETSAT and ECMWF are happy to announce two further workshops this November:

• November 3rd: The Use case workshop is the next in a series of workshops to give updates on recent developments and discuss the next steps of the pilot with its users. The workshop also covers presentations from participants implementing use cases to share their experiences using the European Weather Cloud, and share important elements of feedback. Registration for the event can be found here.

• November 10th: The “Cloud IT” technical workshop is organised to exchange on technical topics around the European Weather Cloud project and the main topics will include:    

  • Technical overview of the storage and cloud infrastructures put in place by both organisations (E&E) covering architectures, experience and lessons learned and future next steps.  
  • Security aspects and approaches providing a Community Cloud Service

  We are keen to learn from other similar projects and encourage participants to contribute presentations on topics related to the above. Please register for this event here.  

Both workshops will be held virtually and be open to Member and Co-operating States of EUMETSAT and ECMWF. Registered participants will receive more detailed information on the agenda and instruction how to join the meetings in the coming weeks.

The aim of the workshop is to introduce the features of the joint ECMWF and EUMETSAT cloud computing systems, to provide an overview of the existing projects already using these systems and to facilitate a dialogue on the future use of the European Weather Cloud by MS-NMHSs in their official duty capacity.

Access to this particular workshop is by invitation only.

Post Meeting Update: Presentations are now available: EWC_Presentations_27_May_2020.zip

Agenda

Enrolment 07:30 UTC  (08:30 BST / 09:30 CEST / 10:30 EEST)

Opening 30-mins before the start of the meeting to allow users to verify successful connection to the online meeting tool.

Start of Workshop 08:00 UTC (09:00 BST / 10:00 CEST / 11:00 EEST)

Introduction to the European Weather Cloud (08:00 UTC)

Chair Session 1: Joachim Saalmüller 

1. Introduction to the European Weather Cloud (Florian Pappenberger/Joachim Saalmüller)
2. How the hosted processing infrastructures of ECMWF and EUMETSAT are integrated in the European Weather Cloud & the current data and services available to the user (Xavier Abellan/Armagan Karatosun)

Morning Break (09:00 - 09:30 UTC)

Using the system (09:30 UTC)

Chair Session 2: Stephan Siemen

1. Demonstration of some current use cases of the European Weather Cloud 

   –LSA SAF: Florian Pinault (Météo-France)

   –Training: Christine Traeger Chatterjee (EUMETSAT)

   –Support for DHMZ Operational Forecasting: Izidor Pelajic (Croatia)

   –Climate Explorer:  Geert Jan Van Oldenborgh (KNMI)

   –Machine Learning: Stephan Siemen on behalf of Matthew Chantry (Oxford University)

    

Lunch break (11:00 - 12:00 UTC )

Looking to the future and getting involved (12:00 UTC )

Chair Session 3: Jörg Schulz

1. Overview of the evolution plans for the European Weather Cloud
2. How to get involved
3. Open Q&A on all sessions

Workshop closure 14:00 UTC 

After months of preparation and hard work, the European Weather Cloud is finally taking shape. Our goal, to bring your computing resources close to where the data is produced.

We are still in the pilot phase, so only a selected group of use cases collected in 2019 are being prepared to be on-boarded. In the coming months, individual use cases will be on-boarded gradually, so we can:

• Ensure a smooth implementation.
• Iteratively improve the system with the feedback received.
• Implement missing features in parallel.
• Offer more focused attention by the European Weather Cloud staff to the on-boarding users

We will also use this space to share all the technical documentation and relevant information to get you started in the cloud. And if you have any problem or question, you may raise an issue in our Support portal or contacting your usual support contacts at ECMWF or EUMETSTAT.

Stay tuned!