Sviluppo di tecnologie per l'ottimizzazione dell'accesso ai dati di LHC, trasferibili ad altri domini scientifici, mediante l'approccio del grid e del cloud computing

The project originates from the experience the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN have accumulated about the simulation, reconstruction and







analysis of experimental data on the computational grid (GRID), in the environment of WLCG (World LHC Computing Grid). This experience shows a big success:







the experiments are able to analyze as they need an unprecedented amount of data, and the users can work in every site of the collaborations. On the other hand the







system is complex, requires substantial effort to be maintained and much knowledge in order to be used efficiently.







The project aims at optimizing access to the data of the LHC experiments on the various physical nodes of the Italian GRID (computer centers arranged in a partially







hierarchical structure, and known as Tier-1, 2 and 3 depending on the level of service offered) . The optimization will take advantage from the presence in this single







project of all the Tier-2 centers of the 3 major experiments, promoting the sharing at national level of the solutions that have been proven more successful within a







specific experiment, and their further development The project will study and optimize both the distribution of data and the remote access methods with dedicated







protocols (GPFS, Lustre, Hadoop, xrootd, http). To do this we will also experiment with the necessary "private" networks at the national and international level







(LHCONE).The project also aims at enabling efficient interactive analysis, suitable for locally sharing the same resources used for Grid work on the Tier-2s, for







example through solutions such as PROOF-on-demand, implementing methods for the best use of the storage and data available at each site. The modern technologies







of virtualization and cloud computing will be used and developed to reach these aims.







A further important objective of this project is the transfer of computing technology developed for the LHC experiments to physics areas outside the high energy







physics (HEP) domain, consistently with the objectives of the Horizon 2020 "Excellent Science" plan. In this way we aim at creating user communities with uniform







computing services at the departmental level and ability to use distributed computing resources at the national level, and in general in Europe and everywhere in the







world, thus promoting also the strengthening of international collaborations In perspective these aggregations should be able to extend beyond physics to other







sciences.







The objectives are mutually interrelated, because the simplification of the management and of the access (both local and GRID-based) to the current Tier-2 and Tier-3







facilities is also needed to ensure that their use could be extended beyond that of the HEP community, which already uses them in an extensive way. The extension to







non-HEP users on the other hand will be greatly beneficial for the long-term sustainability of the adopted solutions