Without the need to connect remotely to Brookhaven to get analysis data, collaborating scientists in Prague can now do their analysis at lightning speed, thanks to their new local Tier2 site.
In an experiment called STAR, researchers aim to recreate the quark-gluon plasma (a soup-like state of the matter) that permeated the universe less than a second after the Big Bang. To do this, they analyze data from Brookhaven’s high-energy heavy nuclei collisions. Before installation of the Tier2 site at NPI ASCR in Prague, STAR collaborators had to connect to Brookhaven remotely each time they needed to retrieve analysis data, and network latencies made this a tedious task.
With the new Tier2 site, NPI ASCR has 20 terabytes of space to store Brookhaven datasets, which can be rotated periodically depending on researchers’ demands and interests. NPI ASCR researchers retrieve data from Brookhaven via an optical network between the two countries that provides 1Gbps connectivity, enabling them to obtain results faster and support larger number of scientists at much lower costs.
The Tier2 data transfer framework allows Brookhaven datasets to be deposited into a “Disk Pool Manager,” developed by the LHC Grid Computing project, where Prague collaborators can easily access them using tools developed by Open Science Grid. Once the Brookhaven datasets arrive at the local NPI ASCR site, researchers use a transparent interface to access the data and launch jobs that run at the Regional Computing Center for Particle Physics “Golias” farm, the biggest site in the Czech Republic that is fully dedicated to particle physics data processing.
Note: While we assume this application does not use TransLight/StarLight but CESNET between Prague (CzechLight) and Chicago (StarLight), it leveragesinvestments from the Czech Republic for international transatlantic connectivity.
URL:
Collaborators:
USA:
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Czech Republic:
Nuclear Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (NPI ASCR); Regional Computing Center for Particle Physics
