Check out the new USENIX Web site.

Home About USENIX Events Membership Publications Students
LISA 2002 - Technical Program Abstract

Pan: A High-Level Configuration Language

Lionel Cons and Piotr Poznanski - CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research
Pp. 83-98 of the Proceedings of LISA '02: Sixteenth Systems Administration Conference,
(Berkeley, CA: USENIX Association, 2002).

Abstract

The computational requirements for the new Large Hadron Collider are enormous: 5-8 PetaBytes of data generated annually with analysis requiring 10 more PetaBytes of disk storage and the equivalent of 200,000 of today's fastest PC processors. This will be a very large and complex computing system, with about two thirds of the computing capacity installed in ``regional computing centres'' across Europe, America, and Asia.

Implemented as a global computational grid, the goal of integrating the large geographically distributed computing fabrics presents challenges in many areas, including: distributed scientific applications; computational grid middleware, automated computer system management; high performance networking; object database management; security; global grid operations.

This paper describes our approach to one of these challenges: the configuration management of a large number of machines, be they nodes in large clusters or desktops in large organizations.

  • View the full text of this paper in HTML, PDF, and Postscript. Until November 2003, you will need your USENIX membership identification in order to access the full papers.
    The Proceedings are published as a collective work, © 2002 by the USENIX Association. All Rights Reserved. Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for the noncommercial reproduction of the complete work for educational or research purposes. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks within this paper.

  • If you need the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it from Adobe's site.
?Need help? Use our Contacts page.

Last changed: 24 Oct. 2002 aw
Technical Program
LISA '02 Home
USENIX home