Open access for ALICE analysis based on virtualization technology

21st International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics

物理学;计算机科学

Buncic, P.^1 ; Gheata, M.^2 ; Schutz, Y.^3

CERN, Geneva, Switzerland^1

Institute of Space Sciences, Bucharest, Romania^2

Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et des Technologies associé'Es, France^3

关键词: Associated softwares;    Data analysis tool;    Data preservations;    Lightweight components;    Nuclear modification factors;    Scientific community;    Strange particle production;    Virtualization technologies;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/664/3/032008/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/664/3/032008

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Open access is one of the important leverages for long-term data preservation for a HEP experiment. To guarantee the usability of data analysis tools beyond the experiment lifetime it is crucial that third party users from the scientific community have access to the data and associated software. The ALICE Collaboration has developed a layer of lightweight components built on top of virtualization technology to hide the complexity and details of the experiment-specific software. Users can perform basic analysis tasks within CernVM, a lightweight generic virtual machine, paired with an ALICE specific contextualization. Once the virtual machine is launched, a graphical user interface is automatically started without any additional configuration. This interface allows downloading the base ALICE analysis software and running a set of ALICE analysis modules. Currently the available tools include fully documented tutorials for ALICE analysis, such as the measurement of strange particle production or the nuclear modification factor in Pb-Pb collisions. The interface can be easily extended to include an arbitrary number of additional analysis modules. We present the current status of the tools used by ALICE through the CERN open access portal, and the plans for future extensions of this system.