학술논문

Interactive Exploitation of Nonuniform Cloud Resources for LHC Computing at CERN
Document Type
Conference
Source
2013 IEEE Sixth International Conference on Cloud Computing Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2013 IEEE Sixth International Conference on. :976-977 Jun, 2013
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Computing and Processing
Large Hadron Collider
Computational modeling
Ecosystems
Physics
Cloud computing
Data analysis
cloud
parallelism
analysis facility
elasticity
CernVM
PROOF
PoD
HTCondor
LHC
CERN
Language
ISSN
2159-6182
2159-6190
Abstract
Computing at LHC is based on the Grid model, where geographically distributed local batch farms are federated using proper middleware. Several computing centers are considering a conversion to private clouds, capable of supporting alternative computing models along with the Grid one: CERN is pioneering such conversion. Computing tasks at LHC are mostly performed using ROOT, a framework for simulation, reconstruction and data analysis. In High Energy Physics (HEP) data are independent physics collision events. PROOF (Parallel ROOT Facility) is a cluster model built on top of ROOT, capable of processing such events interactively and in parallel. Given the increasing availability of cloud resources, running virtual PROOF clusters has become an appealing alternative. We will show how PROOF interactivity naturally fits into the cloud model: in particular by overcoming VM performance diversity via dynamic workload assignment. Several technologies are combined: the CernVM ecosystem provides the base VM image, APIs for cloud federation and a distributed filesystem for LHC software distribution, HTCondor and PROOF on Demand (PoD) control scheduling of leases and affect the lifecycle of VMs opportunistically. We will illustrate the current status of the project, and the conjoint efforts on PROOF and CernVM to create a reference implementation suiting the needs of all LHC experiments. The final product will be a personal and elastic "Analysis Facility as a Service" where the user connects using ROOT itself as standard LHC client.