DIRAC - Distributed Infrastructure with Remote Agent Control
Abstract
This paper describes DIRAC, the LHCb Monte Carlo production system. DIRAC has a client/server architecture based on: Compute elements distributed among the collaborating institutes; Databases for production management, bookkeeping (the metadata catalogue) and software configuration; Monitoring and cataloguing services for updating and accessing the databases. Locally installed software agents implemented in Python monitor the local batch queue, interrogate the production database for any outstanding production requests using the XML-RPC protocol and initiate the job submission. The agent checks and, if necessary, installs any required software automatically. After the job has processed the events, the agent transfers the output data and updates the metadata catalogue. DIRAC has been successfully installed at 18 collaborating institutes, including the DataGRID, and has been used in recent Physics Data Challenges. In the near to medium term future we must use a mixed environment with different types of grid middleware or no middleware. We describe how this flexibility has been achieved and how ubiquitously available grid middleware would improve DIRAC.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cs/0306060,
title = {DIRAC - Distributed Infrastructure with Remote Agent Control},
author = {N. Brook and A. Bogdanchikov and A. Buckley and J. Closier and U. Egede and M. Frank and D. Galli and M. Gandelman and V. Garonne and C. Gaspar and R. Graciani Diaz and K. Harrison and E. van Herwijnen and A. Khan and S. Klous and I. Korolko and G. Kuznetsov and F. Loverre and U. Marconi and J. P. Palacios and G. N. Patrick and A. Pickford and S. Ponce and V. Romanovski and J. J. Saborido and M. Schmelling and A. Soroko and A. Tsaregorodtsev and V. Vagnoni and A. Washbrook},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0306060},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 8 pages, Word, 5 figures. PSN TUAT006