A data Grid prototype for distributed data production in CMS

Abstract

The CMS experiment at CERN is setting up a Grid infrastructure required to fulfill the needs imposed by Terabyte scale productions for the next few years. The goal is to automate the production and at the same time allow the users to interact with the system, if required, to make decisions which would optimize performance. We present the architecture, design and functionality of our first working Objectivity file replication prototype. The middle-ware of choice is the Globus toolkit that provides promising functionality. Our results prove the ability of the Globus toolkit to be used as an underlying technology for a world-wide Data Grid. The required data management functionality includes high speed file transfers, secure access to remote files, selection and synchronization of replicas and managing the meta information. The whole system is expected to be flexible enough to incorporate site specific policies. The data management granularity is the file rather than the object level. The first prototype is currently in use for the High Level Trigger (HLT) production (autumn 2000). Owing to these efforts, CMS is one of the pioneers to use the Data Grid functionality in a running production system. The project can be viewed as an evaluator of different strategies, a test for the capabilities of middle-ware tools and a provider of basic Grid functionalities.

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