Software Management in the LHCb Online System

LHCb has a large online IT infrastructure with thousands of servers and embedded systems, network routers and switches, databases and storage appliances. These systems run a large number of different applications on various operating systems. The dominant operating systems are Linux and MS-Windows. This large heterogeneous environment, operated by a small number of administrators, requires that new software or updates can be pushed quickly, reliably and as automated as possible. We present here the general design of LHCb's software management along with the main tools: LinuxFC / Quattor and Microsoft SMS, how they have been adapted and integrated and discuss experiences and problems

Prompt K_short production in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=0.9 TeV

The production of K_short mesons in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 0.9 TeV is studied with the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The luminosity of the analysed sample is determined using a novel technique, involving measurements of the beam currents, sizes and positions, and is found to be 6.8 +/- 1.0 microbarn^-1. The differential prompt K_short production cross-section is measured as a function of the K_short transverse momentum and rapidity in the region 0 < pT < 1.6 GeV/c and 2.5 < y < 4.0. The data are found to be in reasonable agreement with previous measurements and generator expectations.Comment: 6+18 pages, 6 figures, updated author lis

VIII Encuentro de Docentes e Investigadores en Historia del Diseño, la Arquitectura y la Ciudad

Acta de congresoLa conmemoración de los cien años de la Reforma Universitaria de 1918 se presentó como una ocasión propicia para debatir el rol de la historia, la teoría y la crítica en la formación y en la práctica profesional de diseñadores, arquitectos y urbanistas. En ese marco el VIII Encuentro de Docentes e Investigadores en Historia del Diseño, la Arquitectura y la Ciudad constituyó un espacio de intercambio y reflexión cuya realización ha sido posible gracias a la colaboración entre Facultades de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional y la Facultad de Arquitectura de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, contando además con la activa participación de mayoría de las Facultades, Centros e Institutos de Historia de la Arquitectura del país y la región. Orientado en su convocatoria tanto a docentes como a estudiantes de Arquitectura y Diseño Industrial de todos los niveles de la FAUD-UNC promovió el debate de ideas a partir de experiencias concretas en instancias tales como mesas temáticas de carácter interdisciplinario, que adoptaron la modalidad de presentación de ponencias, entre otras actividades. En el ámbito de VIII Encuentro, desarrollado en la sede Ciudad Universitaria de Córdoba, se desplegaron numerosas posiciones sobre la enseñanza, la investigación y la formación en historia, teoría y crítica del diseño, la arquitectura y la ciudad; sumándose el aporte realizado a través de sus respectivas conferencias de Ana Clarisa Agüero, Bibiana Cicutti, Fernando Aliata y Alberto Petrina. El conjunto de ponencias que se publican en este Repositorio de la UNC son el resultado de dos intensas jornadas de exposiciones, cuyos contenidos han posibilitado actualizar viejos dilemas y promover nuevos debates. El evento recibió el apoyo de las autoridades de la FAUD-UNC, en especial de la Secretaría de Investigación y de la Biblioteca de nuestra casa, como así también de la Facultad de Arquitectura de la UCC; va para todos ellos un especial agradecimiento

B ONLINE LOG ANALYSIS AND MAINTENANCE SYSTEM*

Abstract History has shown, many times computer logs are the only information an administrator may have for an incident, which could be caused either by a malfunction or an attack. Due to the huge amount of logs that are produced from large-scale IT infrastructures, such as LHCb Online, critical information may be overlooked or simply be drowned in a sea of other messages. This clearly demonstrates the need for an automatic system for long-term maintenance and real time analysis of the logs. We have constructed a low cost, fault tolerant centralized logging system which is able to do in-depth analysis and cross-correlation of every log. This system is capable of handling O(10000) different log sources and numerous formats, while trying to keep the overhead as low as possible. It provides log gathering and management, Offline analysis and online analysis. We call Offline analysis the procedure of analyzing old logs for critical information, while Online analysis refer to the procedure of early alerting and reacting. The system is extensible and cooperates well with other applications such as Intrusion Detection / Prevention Systems. This paper presents the LHCb Online topology, problems we had to overcome and our solutions. Special emphasis is given to log analysis and how we use it for monitoring and how we can have uninterrupted access to the logs. We provide performance plots, code modification in well-known log tools and our experience from trying various storage strategies

Fabric Management with Diskless Servers and Quattor on LHCb

At CERN LHCb experiment (Large Hadron Collider beauty), in order to reconstitute and filter events, a huge computing facility is required (currently ~1500 nodes). This computing farm, running SLC (Scientific Linux CERN, a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) derivate is net booted and managed using Quattor to allow easy maintenance. LHCb is also using around 500 diskless Credit Card PCs (CCPCs) embedded in the front end electronic cards. To go farther than the limited Red Hat provided (and now deprecated) netboot tools, a new solution has been designed and will be shortly presented in this paper

LHCb: Universal Logging System for LHCb

In a large-scale IT infrastructure such as the LHCb Online system many applications are running on thousands of machines producing many GBs of logs every day. Although most of the logs are just routine logs, some of them may indicate an attack, a malfunction or provide vital debugging information. Due to their volume only automatisation of the analysis of the logs can provide us with an efficient way to handle all of these logs, ensuring that even the most rare logs will be processed. We present a centralized logging system which allow us to do in-depth analysis of every log. The description of the architecture includes information from how we integrate logging from many devices to a centralized server using syslog and in particular how a correlation can indicate an attack. Special emphasis is given both to security monitoring as well as to the logs that indicate developing malfunctions. To secure our network we have deployed the most known of HIDS, NIDS , LIDS (Host , Network, Log intrusion detection). Each one of them was configured both to cover our needs and communicate with other tools. In some cases , in addition to f configuring the tools, modification to their source code was needed. These modifications are described. Finally we evaluate our work on the performance on live data from our system and show how the predefined requirements are met. We present performance figures, resources needed for the tools and include a comparative study of various tools

LHCb Online Log Analysis and Maintenance System

History has shown, many times computer logs are the only information an administrator may have for an incident, which could be caused either by a malfunction or an attack. Due to the huge amount of logs that are produced from large-scale IT infrastructures, such as LHCb Online, critical information may be overlooked or simply be drowned in a sea of other messages. This clearly demonstrates the need for an automatic system for long-term maintenance and real time analysis of the logs. We have constructed a low cost, fault tolerant centralized logging system which is able to do in-depth analysis and cross-correlation of every log. This system is capable of handling O(10000) different log sources and numerous formats, while trying to keep the overhead as low as possible. It provides log gathering and management, Offline analysis and online analysis. We call Offline analysis the procedure of analyzing old logs for critical information, while Online analysis refer to the procedure of early alerting and reacting. The system is extensible and cooperates well with other applications such as Intrusion Detection / Prevention Systems. This paper presents the LHCb Online topology, problems we had to overcome and our solutions. Special emphasis is given to log analysis and how we use it for monitoring and how we can have uninterrupted access to the logs. We provide performance plots, code modification in well-known log tools and our experience from trying various storage strategies