The UK Particle Physics Tier1 Service

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The UK Particle Physics Tier1 Service
High Performance Data Transfer for the LHC
Service Challenges
The LHC Service Challenge Timeline and Milestones

• LHC Service Challenge
• The LCG Service Challenges are aimed at helping
  to achieve the goal of a production quality
  world-wide Grid that meets the requirements of
  the LHC experiments in terms of functionality and
  scale.
• The programme currently involves both the 4 LHC
  experiments as well as the Tier0, all Tier1s and
  a number of key Tier2s, allowing all primary data
  flows to be demonstrated.
• On the last service challenge
• We managed to obtain close to 1GB/s for extended
  periods
• Several sites exceeded the targets agreed.
• Several sites reached or even exceeded their
  nominal rates.
• Still see quite a few operational problems.
• And the software is not completely debugged yet.
• Our main aims now are to
• Get data rates at all Tier1s up to MoU Values.
• (Re-)deploy Required Services at Sites so that
  they meet MoU Targets.
• Understand other key Use Cases for verification /
  validation.
• Focus is on service and stability.

By September 2006, Tier-1 Centres such as the
GRIDPP Tier-1 Centre at RAL must develop and put
in place infrastructures to cope with sustained
data rates of 400MB/s from CERN. In order to meet
this challenge, a number of Service Challenges
are planned between now and the start of LHC data
taking in 2007 (https//uimon.cern.ch/twiki/bin/vi
ew/LCG/LCGServiceChallenges)
The UKs prototype optical private network (OPN)
to CERN
The prototype OPN service has been provided by
the UKLIGHT project managed by UKERNA. Four
dedicated 1Gb/s links have been provisioned
between RAL and CERN. This is planned to be
replaced by a dedicated 10Gb link over SuperJanet
5 in the second half of the year.
(http//www.uklight.ac.uk/).
The LCG 3D project
Globally replicated, low volume (tens of
terabytes) relational databases will compliment
the streamed physics data. (http//lcg3d.cern.ch/)
Throughput monitoring by RGMA
Sustained data rates of over 170MB/s have been
achieved between CERN and RAL. The LCG project
uses R-GMA (http//www.r-gma.org/) to capture
this data from global producers such as the RAL
Tier-1 for presentation in near to real time
monitoring pages available on the LCG Service
Challenge website.