519 research outputs found
The case for preserving our knowledge and data in physics experiments
This proceeding covers tools and technologies at our disposal for scientific
data preservation and shows that this extends the scientific reach of our
experiments. It is cost-efficient to warehouse data from completed experiments
on the tape archives of our national and international laboratories. These
subject-specific data stores also offer the technologies to capture and archive
knowledge about experiments in the form of technical notes, electronic logs,
websites, etc. Furthermore, it is possible to archive our source code and
computing environments. The paper illustrates these challenges with experience
from preserving the LEP data for the long term.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur
Using the Mass Storage System at ZIB within I3HP
In the framework of I3HP there are two Transnational Access Activities
related to Computational Hadron Physics. One of these activities is access to
the mass storage system at Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum fuer Informationstechnik Berlin
(ZIB). European lattice physics collaborations can apply for mass storage
capacity in order to store and share their configurations or other data (see
http://www.zib.de/i3hp/). In this paper formal and technical aspects of usage
as well as the conformance to the International Lattice DataGrid (ILDG) are
explained.Comment: Talk given at the Workshop on Computational Hadron Physics, Nicosia,
Cyprus, 14--17 September 200
A Monitoring System for the BaBar INFN Computing Cluster
Monitoring large clusters is a challenging problem. It is necessary to
observe a large quantity of devices with a reasonably short delay between
consecutive observations. The set of monitored devices may include PCs, network
switches, tape libraries and other equipments. The monitoring activity should
not impact the performances of the system. In this paper we present PerfMC, a
monitoring system for large clusters. PerfMC is driven by an XML configuration
file, and uses the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) for data
collection. SNMP is a standard protocol implemented by many networked
equipments, so the tool can be used to monitor a wide range of devices. System
administrators can display informations on the status of each device by
connecting to a WEB server embedded in PerfMC. The WEB server can produce
graphs showing the value of different monitored quantities as a function of
time; it can also produce arbitrary XML pages by applying XSL Transformations
to an internal XML representation of the cluster's status. XSL Transformations
may be used to produce HTML pages which can be displayed by ordinary WEB
browsers. PerfMC aims at being relatively easy to configure and operate, and
highly efficient. It is currently being used to monitor the Italian
Reprocessing farm for the BaBar experiment, which is made of about 200 dual-CPU
Linux machines.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics
(CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 10 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figures. PSN
MOET00
Earth science data study
The research proposed in this contract concerning investigations of existing and planned Earth Science and Applications Division (ESAD) data management systems and research into utilities for the access and display of scientific data products was completed. A summary of this work is provided
CASTOR status and evolution
In January 1999, CERN began to develop CASTOR ("CERN Advanced STORage
manager"). This Hierarchical Storage Manager targetted at HEP applications has
been in full production at CERN since May 2001. It now contains more than two
Petabyte of data in roughly 9 million files. In 2002, 350 Terabytes of data
were stored for COMPASS at 45 MB/s and a Data Challenge was run for ALICE in
preparation for the LHC startup in 2007 and sustained a data transfer to tape
of 300 MB/s for one week (180 TB). The major functionality improvements were
the support for files larger than 2 GB (in collaboration with IN2P3) and the
development of Grid interfaces to CASTOR: GridFTP and SRM ("Storage Resource
Manager"). An ongoing effort is taking place to copy the existing data from
obsolete media like 9940 A to better cost effective offerings. CASTOR has also
been deployed at several HEP sites with little effort. In 2003, we plan to
continue working on Grid interfaces and to improve performance not only for
Central Data Recording but also for Data Analysis applications where thousands
of processes possibly access the same hot data. This could imply the selection
of another filesystem or the use of replication (hardware or software).Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics
(CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 2 pages, PDF. PSN TUDT00
Robo-line storage: Low latency, high capacity storage systems over geographically distributed networks
Rapid advances in high performance computing are making possible more complete and accurate computer-based modeling of complex physical phenomena, such as weather front interactions, dynamics of chemical reactions, numerical aerodynamic analysis of airframes, and ocean-land-atmosphere interactions. Many of these 'grand challenge' applications are as demanding of the underlying storage system, in terms of their capacity and bandwidth requirements, as they are on the computational power of the processor. A global view of the Earth's ocean chlorophyll and land vegetation requires over 2 terabytes of raw satellite image data. In this paper, we describe our planned research program in high capacity, high bandwidth storage systems. The project has four overall goals. First, we will examine new methods for high capacity storage systems, made possible by low cost, small form factor magnetic and optical tape systems. Second, access to the storage system will be low latency and high bandwidth. To achieve this, we must interleave data transfer at all levels of the storage system, including devices, controllers, servers, and communications links. Latency will be reduced by extensive caching throughout the storage hierarchy. Third, we will provide effective management of a storage hierarchy, extending the techniques already developed for the Log Structured File System. Finally, we will construct a protototype high capacity file server, suitable for use on the National Research and Education Network (NREN). Such research must be a Cornerstone of any coherent program in high performance computing and communications
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