Representatives from Fermilab and CERN inaugurated the Fermilab Remote Operations Center for the LHC (LHC@FNAL ROC) on 22 October. The ceremony took place on both sides of the Atlantic, with representatives from the US speaking in Fermilab, and those from CERN and the CMS collaboration in the cavern at Point 5 on the LHC ring.
The LHC@FNAL ROC, which is located on the ground floor of the Wilson Hall at Fermilab's main building, has been designed to allow teams at Fermilab to participate remotely in activities related to LHC commissioning and operation. For example, US accelerator experts are already carrying out monitoring operations at the ROC, particularly of components developed and built in the US. They will also take part in beam studies for the LHC.
The LHC@FNAL ROC will also play an important role in the operating and control system for CMS. The CMS collaboration is setting up a network consisting of several control centres, including remote centres such as the LHC@FNAL ROC. These remote centres will back up the main CMS control room at Point 5 by performing various tasks, such as data quality control, data analysis, and calibration and operation of the computer systems for data handling, storage and distribution.
The seven-hour time difference between Fermilab and CERN means that work done at the LHC@FNAL ROC will help to improve the efficiency and reactivity of the CMS team during data-taking. The ROC, which opened at the beginning of the year, has already allowed CMS groups to take part in the commissioning and cosmic-ray testing of sub-detectors for CMS. It is now playing its part in the commissioning of the experiment as a whole. With 600 scientists and 47 institutes, the US is the largest national group in the CMS collaboration.
ALICE recognizes Hewlett-Packard's computing support
The ALICE Collaboration Board presented an award to Hewlett-Packard (HP) on 6 October for the company's role in enabling ALICE physicists to collect and process experimental data on the Grid. The ALICE data-acquisition and offline groups have collaborated with HP since 1993 in an annual programme of computing and Grid physics-data challenges. These are high-level exercises testing hardware and software frameworks for data acquisition and processing.
The award recognizes the special support given by HP, both in terms of hardware and access to expert help, well beyond the normal customer–provider relationship, testament to their commitment and interest in providing effective solutions for high-end and demanding scientific applications. HP hosted experts from ALICE in their "centre de compétences" in Grenoble, performing tests prepared with the help of HP experts and using a large HP cluster.
Present data challenges involve not only real-time event generation and high-speed, high-volume transfer of data to mass storage – up to 1.5 GB/s and 130 TB/day – but also the subsequent offline data reconstruction on the WLCG. The offline group has deployed some 20 high-performance servers, and the cluster management and monitoring are built around the unique HP server remote management system, Integrated Lights-Out.