ComputingALMA Board Meeting

November 2015Jorge Ibsen

Head of ADC, ICT Lead

Contributions from:

ADC Management (JAO): Achermann, Parra, Saldias, Shen, Soto ICT Management (ESO, NAOJ, NRAO): Griffith, Kern (NA), Kosugi, Watanabe

(EA), Chavan, Schmid (EU)

• Operations Review in April , ICT Leads meeting in May to discuss 2020 items, ICT Planning meeting in December

• ACA hardware and servers upgraded in Feb, remaining (three) outstanding issues were worked out by May

• Since Feb, users logged into trusted portals (ESO, NRAO) don't need to explicitly log onto ALMA's Science Portal

• VLBI fringes observed using ALMA/APEX baseline (ALMA Phasing Project milestone) by Feb

• Proposal submission process successfully completed by April. Last hours were uneventful and system correctly coped with high demand

• Proposals Review Committee meeting successfully completed by June.

• Small issues were resolved swiftly during the meeting

• Sub-arrays capability delivered and ready to begin acceptance

• Cycle 3 Observations started in October. Early software issues being monitored and resolved

2015 in a nutshell

7 Incremental software releases were verified (ICT) and validated (Science) during the year.

• These releases included online and offline functionality

Acceptances.

• 201503-CYCLE3-OFF accepted for Cycle 3 Call for Proposals

• Included also updates for PT, SLT, AQUA, Ph1M, User Registry, NGAS, and Pipeline infrastructure

• 201506-CYCLE3-OFF (based on 2015.2 and .3) accepted for Cycle 3 APRC meeting

• Included also updates for the OT Phase 2 Preparation for Cycle 3

• 201509-CYCLE3-OFF (based on 2015.5) accepted for offline applications to be used during first part of Cycle 3:

• New versions of PT, AQUA, AQ, SLT, OT, deployed as part of this acceptance

Software Releases (I)

• Next offline acceptance planned for March 2016

• 201508-CYCLE3-ON release accepted for performing CYCLE-3 online observations:

• CONTROL, TELCAL, BL CORR (single array) accepted without significant issues.

• BL CORR sub arrays: Most significant issues were resolved and final acceptance is planned for November or December depending on pressure form PI projects 2015

• ACA: HW and SW issues are currently under investigation. Dedicated mission planned for end of November 2015.

Software Releases (I)

• To allow sub-arrays, certain functionality was migrated to a layer which performs slightly worse in very limited cases

• Improvements were made to allow for better linear scaling of the autocorrelations

• Hardware and Software problems have prevented the completion of ACA acceptance

• Action plan has been defined (next slide)

ACA enhanced capabilities in Cycle 3

Recovery Mission Plan:

• Send both ACA Subsystem Scientist and ICT Group Lead to the OSF by Nov/Dec

• Create hot-line between OSF and NAOJ to get every technical support,

• and, Extensive test on AOS2-STE without any interaction with Science work.

ACA trouble shooting toward Cycle 3

AQUA

• Used daily for the QA0 process

• Support for QA2 is being developed, requires changes in the life-cycle of Observing Projects and support from the Pipeline

• Trending to be included later, requires efficient query of produced data

SnooPI

• Replaces the current “public view” of the Project Tracker

• To be delivered 2016/Q1

• Modern “Single Page” application with REST-ful back-end

AQUA and SnooPI

SnooPI

SnooPI (2)

Control 

• Cycle 3 - focus was on stability, including increased robustness to hardware errors

• Cycle 4  will be delivered  for testing in December (including portion for solar observing)

• Emphasis on reducing the bug backlog, which should also help addressing operational reliability

Correlator

• Correlator - delivered, commissioning team recommended acceptance

• Will continue with sub-arrays, any  high-impact bugs found will be addressed at a high priority vs. other correlator bugs

 

Control

• Dynamic Scheduling Algorithm and What To Observe tools were run in parallel in the second half of Cycle 2 – list of enhancements were generated and prioritized

• Important enhancements were implemented - DSA is on track for being used in Cycle 3

• ICT and ISOpT collaborating to improve usability of Scheduling for Astronomers on Duty

Scheduling

Separate presentation prepared by Jeff Kern

Pipeline

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.