Performance of an ARC–enabled computing grid for ATLAS/LHC physics analysis and Monte Carlo production under realistic conditions

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series 2010-04, Vol.219 (7), p.072016
• Main Authors: Samset, B H, Cameron, D, Ellert, M, Filipcic, A, Gronager, M, Kleist, J, Maffioletti, S, Ould-Saada, F, Pajchel, K, Read, A L, Taga, A, Collaboration, the Atlas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computation; Middleware; Physics
• ISSN: 1742-6596; 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/219/7/072016

A significant amount of the computing resources available to the ATLAS experiment at the LHC are connected via the ARC grid middleware. ATLAS ARC-enabled resources, which consist of both major computing centers at the Tier-1 level and lesser, local clusters at Tier-2 and 3 level, have shown excellent performance running heavy Monte Carlo (MC) production for the experiment. However, with the imminent arrival of LHC physics data, it is imperative that the deployed grid middlewares also can handle data access patterns caused by user-defined physics analysis. These user-defined jobs can have radically different demands than systematic, centrally controlled MC production. We report on the performance of the ARC middleware, as deployed for ATLAS, for realistic situations with concurrent MC production and physics analysis running on the same resources. Data access patterns for ATLAS MC and physics analysis grid jobs will be shown, together with the performance of various possible storage and file staging models.