Manchester Tier2 Centre

Introduction
Resources
Supported experiments and groups
Productivity
GridPP and NGS services
Posters and Presentations
Links
People

Introduction

Manchester Tier2 centre is a large grid computing facility hosted by the University of Manchester as part of the Particle Physics group resources. It is also part of NorthGrid one of the 4 regional centres for the UKI Federation of the EGEE grid. As such it is also part of GridPP. The main aim of the facility is to support the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiments in particular Atlas. However the Tier2 supports also a number of smaller experiments and research groups that can access the resources via the EGEE grid software.

A visualisation of the state and scale of the EGEE grid is given by the GridMap pages.

Resources

A cluster of 900 nodes constitutes the bulk of the Tier2 resources. Nodes spec 2x2.8 Ghz Xeon 2x250 GB hdd 4GB RAM Dual 1GgE

Supported experiments and groups

CPU usage of supported research groups. It is clear that LHC experiments (or in grid terminology VOs, Virtual Organisations) like Atlas and lhcb have the biggest share but non-HEP VOs like biomed have strongly benefitted from the spare cycles available.

Productivity

Performance during the first quarter of 2007 was particularly impressive. The cluster was used continuously and produced more CPU hours than some countries as shown by the accounting records.

GridPP services

A number of other services is maintained in the Tier2 centre.

GridPP WEB server

GridPP WEB server hosts also other sites of national and international interest

• HEP sysadmin site for HEP system administrators hosting also a wiki, svn repositories and yum repositories used also by EGEE SA1 (EGEE operations).
• Gridsite one of the software components of the EGEE software and the core of the GridPP WEB servers.
• EGEE JSPG (Joint Security Policy Group)

GridPP VOMS server

GridPP VOMS hosts different smaller research group (mice, minos, pheno...) and commercial groups (totalep) VOs allowing them to access the grid.

Posters and Presentations

Links to presentation regarding the Tier2 or regarding some services hosted at the Tier2 like the GridPP VOMS server or applications developed using the Tier2.

CHEP 06

• Large Cluster Management
• Cluster Distributed Dynamic Storage
• VOMS deployment for small national VOs and local groups

CHEP 07

• Use of Cfengine for deploying LCG/gLite middle-ware
• HEP System Management Working Group and WEB site
• Distributed Cluster dynamic storage: A comparison of dcache, xrootd and slashgrid storage systems running on batch nodes
• Using the Grid for Large Scale and Nightly Testing of the ATLAS Trigger & Data Acquisition System

EGEE User Forum 2007

• Porting ATLAS Trigger & Data Acquisition System to Run on the Grid

e-Science All Hands Meeting 2006

• VOMS deployment in GridPP and NGS

Nuclear Science

• Using the Grid to Test the ATLAS Trigger and Data Acquisition System at Large Scale

Astronomy

• Ralph Eatough: "A search for relativistic binary pulsars in the Galactic plane" - Jodrell Bank Observatory (2005-2009)
• Talks connected to the thesis

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

• An Interference Removal Technique for Radio Pulsar Searches (preprint)

Contributions to Biomedical Research

• Avian flu drug simulations
• Malaria drug simulations

GridPP Site Readiness Review

In 2007 GridPP decided to review the sites readiness for LHC data. Below are the results for Manchester

• SRR Site Response
• SRR Panel Feedback

Links

Other pages containing information about the Manchester Tier2 centre.

• Manchester GridPP wiki
• Manchester Monitoring pages

People

People involved in the maintainance of the Tier2. Refer to the group members page for contact details.

• NorthGrid Technical Coordinator: Alessandra Forti
• System Administrator: Owen McShane
• System Administrator: Stuart Wild