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BOINC + CernVM

This article discusses the collaborative efforts of many individuals at CERN and beyond, focusing on the Pre-GDB session on Volunteer Computing held at CERN on November 11, 2014. The challenges and developments in integrating real LHC physics work into BOINC, leveraging CernVM technology, and creating a Volunteer Cloud are highlighted. The achievements of the Test4Theory project, including active volunteers, successful Monte Carlo jobs, and the transition to vLHC@home, are detailed. The article illustrates the innovative fusion of BOINC and CernVM in enabling volunteer resources to support critical CERN projects seamlessly.

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BOINC + CernVM

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  1. BOINC + CernVM Ben Segal / CERN (describing the work of many people at CERN and elsewhere) Pre-GDB on Volunteer Computing CERN, November 11, 2014

  2. “Real physics”: Challenge issued in 2006 2

  3. Challenges (1) of “real LHC physics” with BOINC • It is not practical to deploy HEP applications on volunteer computers using conventional BOINC porting: • Each application usually has a huge codebase (order of several GBytes) and requires a lot of 3rd party dependencies • Applications usually require specific platform/OS combinations to run • Applications are updated frequently 3

  4. Challenges (2) of “real LHC physics” with BOINC Experiments would like BOINC volunteer resources to be transparently integrated into existing Grid infrastructures, including their own job schedulers, and/or as “Clouds” In contrast to Grid resources, volunteer computing resources are not “managed” (and thus cannot be “trusted”, particularly with Grid credentials) 4

  5. Development Timeline 2006 – 2007 : VM’s added to BOINC as proof of concept: ATLAS code run under BOINC with VMWare but image too big and no scheduler interface. 2008 - 2009 : CernVM interfaced to BOINC, solving image size problem. CernVM VirtualBox BOINC wrapper developed 2009 – 2010 : CoPilot added, solving VM credential problem 2010 : ATLAS (PanDA), ALICE (ALIEN) and Theory jobs run 2011 : Test4Theory production begins Publications at CHEP, BOINC Workshops, etc. 5

  6. Development effort CERN effort : BS plus students, and PH-SFT (CernVM + CoPilot). Volunteer spirit ! Funding from CCC and Shuttleworth Foundation paid for CernVM BOINC wrapper development (Daniel Lombrana) « Volunteer Cloud » approach, BOINC only used to start VM Web technologies used where possible (viewing VM, etc.) Always targeted LHC experiments, but first client was the CERN Theory Group for MCPlots project (« Test4Theory »). 6

  7. BOINC – CernVM Architecture 7

  8. BOINC + CernVM + Co-Pilot => Volunteer Cloud 8

  9. What has Test4Theory achieved so far? • About 11000 volunteers and 20000 PC’s have contributed since 2011 • Currently about 2000 getting credit with about 3000 active PC’s • About 2500 simultaneously active VM’s in a 24 hour period • About 10000 successful Monte Carlo jobs run per day • Each job is 100,000 events: so far over 1.5 trillion events run • Graphic displays show the volunteers details of their CERN job activity, accumulated job statistics, plus offer online tuition • In minimum-maintenance mode since 2 years

  10. LHC@home 2.0( Test4Theory project => vLHC@home ) • We have built a “Volunteer Cloud” • It is in production since 2011 for CERN’s Theory Group running Monte Carlo QCD event generation • The main computing resource for the MCPlots project • Recently reconfigured as “vLHC@home” to accommodate other CERN LHC experiments with similar requirements

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