SL(C) 5 Migration at CERN

Most LCG sites are currently running on SL(C)4. However, this operating system is already rather old, and it is becoming difficult to get the required hardware drivers, to get the best out of recent hardware. A possible way out is the migration to SL(C)5 based systems where possible, in combination with virtualization methods. The former is typically possible for nodes where the software to run the services is available and tested, while the latter offers a possibility to make use of the new hardware platforms whilst maintaining operating system compatibility. Since autumn 2008, CERN has offered public interactive and batch worker nodes for evaluation to the experiments. For the Grid environment, access is granted by a dedicated CEs. The status of the evaluation, feedback received from the experiments and the status of the migration will be reviewed, and the status of virtualization of services at CERN will be reported. Beyond this, the migration to a new operating system also offers an excellent opportunity to upgrade the fabric infrastructure used to manage the servers.