ICALEPCS2013 - List of Keywords (monitoring)

Paper	Title	Other Keywords	Page
MOCOAAB06	MeerKAT Control and Monitoring - Design Concepts and Status	interface, hardware, controls, status	19
	L. Van den Heever SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa
	Funding: National Research Foundation of South Africa This presentation gives a status update of the MeerKAT Control & Monitoring subsystem focusing on the development philosophy, design concepts, technologies and key design decisions. The presentation will be supplemented by a poster (if accepted) with live demonstation of the current KAT-7 Control&Monitoring system. The vision for MeerKAT includes to a) use Offset Gregorian antennas in a radio telescope array combined with optimized receiver technology in order to achieve superior imaging and maximum sensitivity, b) be the most sensitive instrument in the world in L-band, c) be an instrument that will be considered the benchmark for performance and reliability by the scientific community at large, and d) be a true precursor for the SKA that will be integrated into the SKA-mid dish array. The 7-dish engineering prototype (KAT-7) for MeerKAT is already producing exciting science and is being operated 24x7. The first MeerKAT antenna will be on site by the end of this year and the first two Receptors will be fully integrated and ready for testing by April 2014. By December 2016 hardware for all 64 receptors will be installed and accepted and 32 antennas will be fully commissioned.
	Slides MOCOAAB06 [1.680 MB]

MOPPC043	Development of the Thermal Beam Loss Monitors of the Spiral2 Control System	detector, EPICS, controls, FPGA	181
	C.H. Haquin GANIL, Caen, France F. Negoita IFIN, Magurele- Bucuresti, Romania
	The Spiral2 linear accelerator will drive high intensity beams, up to 5mA, to up to 200kW at linac exit. Such beams can seriously damage and activate the machine ! To prevent from such situation, the Machine Protection System (MPS) has been designed. This system is connected to diagnostics indicating if the beam remains under specific limits. As soon as a diagnostic detects its limit is crossed, it informs the MPS which will in turn take actions that can lead to a beam cut-off in appropriated timing requirements. In this process, the Beam Loss Monitors (BLM) are involved in monitoring prompt radiation generated by beam particles interactions with beam line components and responsible for activation, on one side, and thermal effects, on the other side. BLM system relies mainly on scintillator detectors, NIM electronics and a VME subsystem monitoring the heating of the machine. This subsystem, also called «Thermal BLM», will be integrated in the Spiral2 EPICS environment. For its development, a specific project organization has been setup since the development is subcontracted to Cosylab. This paper focuses on the Thermal BLM controls aspects and describes this development process.
	Poster MOPPC043 [0.957 MB]

MOPPC055	Revisiting CERN Safety System Monitoring (SSM)	network, PLC, database, status	218
	T. Hakulinen, P. Ninin, R. Nunes, T.R. Riesco CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	CERN Safety System Monitoring (SSM) is a system for monitoring state-of-health of the various access and personnel safety systems at CERN since more than three years. SSM implements monitoring of different operating systems, network equipment, storage, and special devices like PLCs, front ends, etc. It is based on the monitoring framework Zabbix, which supports alert notifications, issue escalation, reporting, distributed management, and automatic scalability. The emphasis of SSM is on the needs of maintenance and system operation, where timely and reliable feedback directly from the systems themselves is important to quickly pinpoint immediate or creeping problems. A new application of SSM is to anticipate availability problems through predictive trending that allows to visualize and manage upcoming operational issues and infrastructure requirements. Work is underway to extend the scope of SSM to all access and safety systems managed by the access and safety team with upgrades to the monitoring methodology as well as to the visualization of results.
	Poster MOPPC055 [1.537 MB]

MOPPC062	Real-Time System Supervision for the LHC Beam Loss Monitoring System at CERN	FPGA, detector, database, operation	242
	C. Zamantzas, B. Dehning, E. Effinger, J. Emery, S. Jackson CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	The strategy for machine protection and quench prevention of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) is mainly based on the Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system. The LHC BLM system is one of the most complex and large instrumentation systems deployed in the LHC. In addition to protecting the collider, the system also needs to provide a means of diagnosing machine faults and deliver feedback of the losses to the control room as well as to several systems for their setup and analysis. In order to augment the dependability of the system several layers of supervision has been implemented internally and externally to the system. This paper describes the different methods employed to achieve the expected availability and system fault detection.

MOPPC087	Tools and Rules to Encourage Quality for C/C++ Software	software, framework, controls, diagnostics	303
	K. Sigerud, V. Baggiolini, J.C. Bau, S. Deghaye, J. Nguyen Xuan, X. Piroux, G. Sivatskiy, W. Sliwinski, I. Yastrebov CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Inspired by the success of the software improvement process for Java projects, in place since several years in the CERN accelerator controls group, it was agreed in 2011 to apply the same principles to the C/C++ software developed in the group, an initiative we call the Software Improvement Process for C/C++ software (SIP4C/C++). The objectives of the SIP4C/C++ initiative are: 1) agree on and establish best software quality practices, 2) choose tools for quality and 3) integrate these tools in the build process. After a year we have reached a number of concrete results, thanks to the collaboration between several involved projects, including: common build tool (based on GNU Make), which standardizes the way to build, test and release C/C++ binaries; unit testing with Google Test & Google Mock; continuous integration of C/C++ products with the existing CI server (Atlassian Bamboo); static code analysis (Coverity); generation of manifest file with dependency information; and runtime in-process metrics. This work presents the SIP4C/C++ initiative in more detail, summarizing our experience and the future plans.
	Poster MOPPC087 [3.062 MB]

MOPPC088	Improving Code Quality of the Compact Muon Solenoid Electromagnetic Calorimeter Control Software to Increase System Maintainability	software, controls, GUI, detector	306
	O. Holme, D.R.S. Di Calafiori, G. Dissertori, L. Djambazov, W. Lustermann, S. Zelepoukine ETH, Zurich, Switzerland S. Zelepoukine UW-Madison/PD, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
	Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) The Detector Control System (DCS) software of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (ECAL) of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN is designed primarily to enable safe and efficient operation of the detector during Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data-taking periods. Through a manual analysis of the code and the adoption of ConQAT, a software quality assessment toolkit, the CMS ECAL DCS team has made significant progress in reducing complexity and improving code quality, with observable results in terms of a reduction in the effort dedicated to software maintenance. This paper explains the methodology followed, including the motivation to adopt ConQAT, the specific details of how this toolkit was used and the outcomes that have been achieved. ConQAT, https://www.conqat.org/
	Poster MOPPC088 [2.510 MB]

MOPPC100	SKA Monitioring and Control Progress Status	controls, operation, site, interface	340
	S. Roy Chaudhuri, S. Natarajan TRDDC, Pune, India D. Barbosa GRIT, Aveiro, Portugal A. Bridger ROE, UTAC, United Kingdom T. Coiffard GTD, Barcelona, Spain Y. Gupta, Y.G. Wadadekar NCRA, Pune, India J.C. Guzman CSIRO ATNF, Epping, Australia V.K. Mohile PSL, Pune, India R. Smareglia INAF-OAT, Trieste, Italy L. Van den Heever SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa S. Vrcic DRAO, Penticton, British Columbia, Canada
	The Monitoring and Control system for the SKA radio telescope is now moving from the conceptual design to the system requirements and design phase, with the formation of a consortium geared towards delivering the Telescope Manager (TM) work package. Recent program decisions regarding hosting of the telescope across two sites, Australia and South Africa, have brought in new challenges from the TM design perspective. These include strategy to leverage the individual capabilities of autonomous telescopes, and also integrating the existing precursor telescopes (ASKAP and MeerKat) with heterogenous technologies and approaches into the SKA. A key design goal from the viewpoint of minimizing development and lifecycle costs is to have a uniform architectural approach across the telescopes, and to maximize standardization of software and instrumentation across the systems, despite potential variations in system hardware and procurement arrangements among the participating countries. This paper discusses some of these challenges, and their mitigation approaches that the consortium intends to work upon, along with an update on the current status and progress on the overall TM work.

MOPPC140	High-Availability Monitoring and Big Data: Using Java Clustering and Caching Technologies to Meet Complex Monitoring Scenarios	distributed, software, controls, network	439
	M. Bräger, M. Brightwell, E. Koufakis, R. Martini, A. Suwalska CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Monitoring and control applications face ever more demanding requirements: as both data sets and data rates continue to increase, non-functional requirements such as performance, availability and maintainability become more important. C2MON (CERN Control and Monitoring Platform) is a monitoring platform developed at CERN over the past few years. Making use of modern Java caching and clustering technologies, the platform supports multiple deployment architectures, from a simple 3-tier system to highly complex clustered solutions. In this paper we consider various monitoring scenarios and how the C2MON deployment strategy can be adapted to meet them.
	Poster MOPPC140 [1.382 MB]

TUPPC013	Scaling Out of the MADOCA Database System for SACLA	database, controls, GUI, operation	574
	T. Hirono, T. Hamano, A. Yamashita JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken, Japan T. Fukui, K. Hagihara, T. Maruyama, K. Nemoto, M. Yamaga RIKEN/SPring-8, Hyogo, Japan
	MADOCA was adopted for the control system of SACLA, and the MADOCA database system was designed as a copy of the database system in SPring-8. The system realized a high redundancy because the system had already tested in SPring-8. However the signals which the MADOCA system handles in SACLA are increasing drastically. And GUIs that require frequent database accesses were developed. The load of the database system increased, and the response of the systems delayed in some occasions. We investigated the bottle neck of the system. From the results of the investigation, we decided to distribute the access to two servers. The primary server handles present data and signal properties. The other handles archived data, and the data was mounted to the primary server as a proxy table. In this way, we could divide the load into two servers and clients such as GUI do not need any changes. We have tested the load and response of the system by adding 40000 signals to present 45000 signals, of which data acquisition intervals are typically 2 sec. The system was installed successfully and operating without any interruption which is caused by the high load of the database.

TUPPC021	Monitoring and Archiving of NSLS-II Booster Synchrotron Parameters	booster, controls, operation, EPICS	587
	A.A. Derbenev, P.B. Cheblakov, R.A. Kadyrov, S.E. Karnaev, S.S. Serednyakov, E.A. Simonov BINP SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia M.A. Davidsaver BNL, Upton, New York, USA
	When operating a multicomponent system, it is always necessary to observe the state of a whole installation as well as of its components. Tracking data is essential to perform tuning and troubleshooting, so records of a work process generally have to be kept. As any other machine, the NSLS-II booster should have an implementation of monitoring and archiving schemes as a part of the control system. Because of the booster being a facility with a cyclical operation mode, there were additional challenges when designing and developing monitoring and archiving tools. Thorough analysis of available infrastructure and current approaches to monitoring and archiving was conducted to take into account additional needs that come from booster special characteristics. A software extension for values present in the control system allowed to track the state of booster subsystems and to perform an advanced archiving with multiple warning levels. Time stamping and data collecting strategies were developed as a part of monitoring scheme in order to preserve and recover read-backs and settings as consistent data sets. This paper describes relevant solutions incorporated in the booster control system.
	Poster TUPPC021 [0.589 MB]

TUPPC023	MeerKAT Poster and Demo Control and Monitoring Highlights	controls, interface, hardware, software	594
	C.C.A. de Villiers SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa
	The 64-dish MeerKAT Karoo Array Telescope, currently under development, will become the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere until the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is completed around 2024. MeerKAT will ultimately become an integral part of the SKA. The MeerKAT project will build on the techniques and experience acquired during the development of KAT-7, a 7-dish engineering prototype that has already proved its worth in practical use, operating 24/7 to deliver useful science data in the Karoo. Much of the MeerKAT development will centre on further refinement and scaling of the technology, using lessons learned from KAT-7. The poster session will present the proposed MeerKAT CAM (Control & Monitoring) architecture and highlight the solutions we are exploring for system monitoring, control and scheduling, data archiving and retrieval, and human interaction with the system. We will supplement the poster session with a live demonstration of the present KAT-7 CAM system. This will include a live video feed from the site as well as the use of the current GUI to generate and display the flow of events and data in a typical observation.
	Poster TUPPC023 [0.471 MB]

TUPPC024	Challenges to Providing a Successful Central Configuration Service to Support CERN’s New Controls Diagnostics and Monitoring System	controls, database, diagnostics, framework	596
	Z. Makonnen, M. Buttner, Z. Zaharieva CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	The Controls Diagnostic and Monitoring service (DIAMON) provides monitoring and diagnostics tools to the operators in the CERN Control Centre. A recent reengineering presented the opportunity to restructure its data management and to integrate it with the central Controls Configuration Service (CCS). The CCS provides the Configuration Management for the Controls System for all accelerators at CERN. The new facility had to cater for the configuration management of all agents monitored by DIAMON, (>3000 computers of different types), provide deployment information, relations between metrics, and historical information. In addition, it had to be integrated into the operational CCS, while ensuring stability and data coherency. An important design decision was to largely reuse the existing infrastructure in the CCS and adapt the DIAMON data management to it e.g. by using the device/property model through a Virtual Devices framework to model the DIAMON agents. This article will show how these challenging requirements were successfully met, the problems encountered and their resolution. The new service architecture will be presented: database model, new and tailored processes and tools.
	Poster TUPPC024 [2.741 MB]

TUPPC029	Integration, Processing, Analysis Methodologies and Tools for Ensuring High Data Quality and Rapid Data Access in the TIM* Monitoring System	database, real-time, controls, data-acquisition	615
	A. Suwalska, M. Brightwell, M. Bräger, E. Koufakis, R. Martini, P. Sollander CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Processing, storing and analysing large amounts of real-time data is a challenge for every monitoring system. The performance of the system strongly depends on high quality configuration data and the ability of the system to cope with data anomalies. The Technical Infrastructure Monitoring system (TIM) addresses data quality issues by enforcing a workflow of strict procedures to integrate or modify data tag configurations. TIM’s data acquisition layer architecture allows real-time analysis and rejection of irrelevant data. The discarded raw data 90,000,000 transactions/day) are stored in a database, then purged after gathering statistics. The remaining operational data (2,000,000 transactions/day) are transferred to a server running an in-memory database, ensuring its rapid processing. These data are currently stored for 30 days allowing ad hoc historical data analysis. In this paper we describe the methods and tools used to guarantee the quality of configuration data and highlight the advanced architecture that ensures optimal access to operational data as well as the tools used to perform off-line data analysis. * Technical Infrastructure Monitoring system
	Poster TUPPC029 [0.742 MB]

TUPPC045	Software Development for High Speed Data Recording and Processing	detector, software, network, controls	665
	D. Boukhelef, J. Szuba, K. Wrona, C. Youngman XFEL. EU, Hamburg, Germany
	Funding: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 283745. The European XFEL beam delivery defines a unique time structure that requires acquiring and processing data in short bursts of up to 2700 images every 100 ms. The 2D pixel detectors being developed produce up to 10 GB/s of 1-Mpixel image data. Efficient handling of this huge data volume requires large network bandwidth and computing capabilities. The architecture of the DAQ system is hierarchical and modular. The DAQ network uses 10 GbE switched links to provide large bandwidth data transport between the front-end interfaces (FEI), data handling PC layer servers, and storage and analysis clusters. Front-end interfaces are required to build images acquired during a burst into pulse ordered image trains and forward them to PC layer farm. The PC layer consists of dedicated high-performance computers for raw data monitoring, processing and filtering, and aggregating data files that are then distributed to on-line storage and data analysis clusters. In this contribution we give an overview of the DAQ system architecture, communication protocols, as well as software stack for data acquisition pre-processing, monitoring, storage and analysis.
	Poster TUPPC045 [1.323 MB]

TUPPC050	Control, Safety and Diagnostics for Future ATLAS Pixel Detectors	detector, controls, diagnostics, operation	679
	S. Kersten, P. Kind, P. Mättig, L. Puellen, S. Weber, C. Zeitnitz Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany F. Gensolen CPPM, Marseille, France S. Kovalenko, K. Lantzsch CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	To ensure the excellent performance of the ATLAS Pixel detector during the next run periods of the LHC, with increasing demands, two upgrades of the pixel detector are foreseen. One takes place in the first long shutdown, which is currently on-going. During this period an additional layer, the Insertable B-Layer, will be installed. The second upgrade will replace the entire pixel detector and is planed for 2020, when the LHC will be upgraded to HL-LHC. As once installed no access is possible over years, a highly reliable control system is required. It has to supply the detector with all entities required for operation, protect it at all times, and provide detailed information to diagnose the detector’s behaviour. Design constraints are the sensitivity of the sensors and reduction of material inside the tracker volume. We report on the construction of the control system for the Insertable B Layer and present a concept for the control of the pixel detector at the HL-LHC. While the latter requires completely new strategies, the control system of the IBL includes single new components, which can be developed further for the long-term upgrade.
	Poster TUPPC050 [0.566 MB]

TUPPC063	Control and Monitoring of the Online Computer Farm for Offline Processing in LHCb	controls, network, experiment, interface	721
	L.G. Cardoso, P. Charpentier, J. Closier, M. Frank, C. Gaspar, B. Jost, G. Liu, N. Neufeld CERN, Geneva, Switzerland O. Callot LAL, Orsay, France
	LHCb, one of the 4 experiments at the LHC accelerator at CERN, uses approximately 1500 PCs (averaging 12 cores each) for processing the High Level Trigger (HLT) during physics data taking. During periods when data acquisition is not required most of these PCs are idle. In these periods it is possible to profit from the unused processing capacity to run offline jobs, such as Monte Carlo simulation. The LHCb offline computing environment is based on LHCbDIRAC (Distributed Infrastructure with Remote Agent Control). In LHCbDIRAC, job agents are started on Worker Nodes, pull waiting tasks from the central WMS (Workload Management System) and process them on the available resources. A Control System was developed which is able to launch, control and monitor the job agents for the offline data processing on the HLT Farm. This control system is based on the existing Online System Control infrastructure, the PVSS SCADA and the FSM toolkit. It has been extensively used launching and monitoring 22.000+ agents simultaneously and more than 850.000 jobs have already been processed in the HLT Farm. This paper describes the deployment and experience with the Control System in the LHCb experiment.
	Poster TUPPC063 [2.430 MB]

TUPPC067	A Distributed Remote Monitoring System for ISIS Sample Environment	controls, EPICS, neutron, instrumentation	733
	M.R.W. North, G.L. Burgess STFC/RAL/ISIS, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, United Kingdom
	The benefits of remote monitoring in industrial and manufacturing plants are well documented and equally applicable to scientific research facilities. This paper highlights the benefits of implementing a distributed monitoring system for sample environment equipment and instrumentation at the ISIS Neutron & Muon source facility. The upcoming implementation of an EPICS replacement for the existing beamline control system provides a timely opportunity to integrate operational monitoring and diagnostic capabilities with minimal overheads. The ISIS facility located at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory UK is the most productive research centre of its type in the world supporting a national and international community of more than 2000 scientists using neutrons and muons for research into materials and life sciences.
	Poster TUPPC067 [0.821 MB]

TUPPC070	Detector Controls for the NOvA Experiment Using Acnet-in-a-Box	controls, detector, PLC, interface	740
	D.J. Nicklaus, L.R. Carmichael, D. Finstrom, B. Hendricks, CA. King, W.L. Marsh, R. Neswold, J.F. Patrick, J.G. Smedinghoff, J. You Fermilab, Batavia, USA
	In recent years, we have packaged the Fermilab accelerator control system, Acnet, so that other instances of it can be deployed independent of the Fermilab infrastructure. This encapsulated "Acnet-in-a-Box" is installed as the detector control system at the NOvA Far Detector. NOvA is a neutrino experiment using a beam of particles produced by the Fermilab accelerators. There are two NOvA detectors: a 330 ton ‘‘Near Detector'' on the Fermilab campus and a 14000 ton ‘‘Far Detector'' 735 km away. All key tiers and aspects of Acnet are available in the NOvA instantiation, including the central device database, java Open Access Clients, erlang front-ends, application consoles, synoptic displays, data logging, and state notifications. Acnet at NOvA is used for power-supply control, monitoring position and strain gauges, environmental control, PLC supervision, relay rack monitoring, and interacting with Epics PVs instrumenting the detector's avalanche photo-diodes. We discuss the challenges of maintaining a control system in a remote location, synchronizing updates between the instances, and improvements made to Acnet as a result of our NOvA experience.
	Poster TUPPC070 [0.876 MB]

TUPPC071	Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment: Controls and Monitoring	controls, EPICS, emittance, hardware	743
	P.M. Hanlet IIT, Chicago, Illinois, USA
	The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment is a demonstration experiment to prove the feasibility of cooling a beam of muons for use in a Neutrino Factory and/or Muon Collider. The MICE cooling channel will produce a 10% reduction in beam emittance which will be measured with a 1% resolution, and this level of precision requires strict controls and monitoring of all experimental parameters to minimize systematic errors. The MICE Controls and Monitoring system is based on EPICS and integrates with the DAQ, data monitoring systems, a configuration database, and state machines for device operations. Run Control has been developed to ensure proper sequencing of equipment and use of system resources to protect data quality. State machines are used in test operations of cooling channel superconducting solenoids to set parameters for monitoring, alarms, and data archiving. A description of this system, its implementation and performance during both muon beam data collection and magnet training will be discussed.
	Poster TUPPC071 [1.820 MB]

TUPPC111	Online Status and Settings Monitoring for the LHC Collimators	status, injection, collimation, operation	836
	G. Valentino University of Malta, Information and Communication Technology, Msida, Malta R.W. Aßmann, D. Jacquet, S. Redaelli, E. Veyrunes CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	The Large Hadron Collider is equipped with 100 movable collimators. The LHC collimator control system is responsible for the accurate synchronization of around 400 axes of motion at the microsecond level, and with the precision of a few micrometres. The status and settings of the collimators can be monitored by three displays in the CERN Control Center, each providing a different viewpoint onto the system and a different level of abstraction, such as the positions in mm or beam size units. Any errors and warnings are also displayed. In this paper, the display operation is described, as well as the interaction that occurs when an operator is required to identify and understand an error in the collimator settings.
	Poster TUPPC111 [2.260 MB]

TUPPC120	LHC Collimator Alignment Operational Tool	alignment, collimation, controls, interface	860
	G. Valentino, R.W. Aßmann, S. Redaelli CERN, Geneva, Switzerland N.J. Sammut University of Malta, Information and Communication Technology, Msida, Malta
	Beam-based LHC collimator alignment is necessary to determine the beam centers and beam sizes at the collimator locations for various machine configurations. Fast and automatic alignment is provided through an operational tool has been developed for use in the CERN Control Center, which is described in this paper. The tool is implemented as a Java application, and acquires beam loss and collimator position data from the hardware through a middleware layer. The user interface is designed to allow for a quick transition from application start up, to selecting the required collimators for alignment and configuring the alignment parameters. The measured beam centers and sizes are then logged and displayed in different forms to help the user set up the system.
	Poster TUPPC120 [2.464 MB]

TUPPC124	Distributed Network Monitoring Made Easy - An Application for Accelerator Control System Process Monitoring	network, controls, software, Linux	875
	C.E. Peters, M.A. Power ANL, Argonne, USA
	Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. As the complexity and scope of distributed control systems increase, so does the need for an ever increasing level of automated process monitoring. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate one method whereby the SNMP protocol combined with open-source management tools can be quickly leveraged to gain critical insight into any complex computing system. Specifically, we introduce an automated, fully customizable, web-based remote monitoring solution which has been implemented at the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS). This collection of tools is not limited to only monitoring network infrastructure devices, but also to monitor critical processes running on any remote system. The tools and techniques used are typically available pre-installed or are available via download on several standard operating systems, and in most cases require only a small amount of configuration out of the box. High level logging, level-checking, alarming, notification and reporting is accomplished with the open source network management package OpenNMS, and normally requires a bare minimum of implementation effort by a non-IT user.
	Poster TUPPC124 [0.875 MB]

TUPPC129	NIF Device Health Monitoring	controls, GUI, framework, status	887
	R. Fleming, C.M. Estes, J.M. Fisher, E.A. Stout LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
	Funding: * This work was performed under the auspices of the Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, (LLNS) under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344. #LLNL-ABS-633794 The Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) uses Front-End Processors (FEP) controlling over 60,000 devices. Often device faults are not discovered until a device is needed during a shot, creating run-time errors that delay the laser shot. This paper discusses a new ICCS framework feature for FEPs to monitor devices and report its overall health, allowing for problem devices to be identified before they are needed. Each FEP has different devices and a unique definition of healthy. The ICCS software uses an object oriented approach using polymorphism so FEP’s can determine their health status and report it in a consistent way. This generic approach provides consistent GUI indication and the display of detailed information of device problems. It allows for operators to be informed quickly of faults and provides them with the information necessary to pin point and resolve issues. Operators now know before starting a shot if the control system is ready, thereby reducing time and material lost due to a failure and improving overall control system reliability and availability.
	Poster TUPPC129 [2.318 MB]

TUCOCA06	Current Status of a Carborne Survey System, KURAMA	survey, radiation, operation, detector	926
	M. Tanigaki, Y. Kobayashi, R. Okumua, N. Sato, K. Takamiya, H. Yoshinaga, H. Yoshino Kyoto University, Research Reactor Institute, Osaka, Japan
	A carborne survey system named as KURAMA (Kyoto University RAdiation MApping system) has been developed as a response to the nuclear accident at TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. Now the system evolved into a CompactRIO-based KURAMA-II, and serves for the various types of applications. More than a hundred of KURAMA-II are deployed for the periodical drawing of the radiation map in the East Japan by Japanese government. A continuous radiation monitoring by KURAMA-II on local buses is started in Fukushima prefecture as the collaboration project among Kyoto University, Fukushima prefectural government, and JAEA. Extended applications such as precise radiation mappings in farmlands and parks are also on the way. The present status and future prospects of KURAMA and KURAMA-II are introduced.

TUCOCA08	Personnel and Machine Protection Systems in The National Ignition Facility (NIF)	target, controls, laser, operation	933
	R.K. Reed, J.C. Bell LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
	Funding: * This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. #LLNL-ABS-633232 The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world’s largest and most energetic laser system and has the potential to generate significant levels of ionizing radiation. The NIF employs real time safety systems to monitor and mitigate the potential hazards presented by the facility. The Machine Safety System (MSS) monitors key components in the facility to allow operations while also protecting against configurations that could damage equipment. The NIF Safety Interlock System (SIS) monitors for oxygen deficiency, radiological alarms, and controls access to the facility preventing exposure to laser light and radiation. Together the SIS and MSS control permissives to the hazard generating equipment and annunciate hazard levels in the facility. To do this reliably and safely, the SIS and MSS have been designed as fail safe systems with a proven performance record now spanning over 12 years. This presentation discusses the SIS and MSS, design, implementation, operator interfaces, validation/verification, and the hazard mitigation approaches employed in the NIF. A brief discussion of common failures encountered in the design of safety systems and how to avoid them will be presented.
	Slides TUCOCA08 [2.808 MB]

WECOAAB01	An Overview of the LHC Experiments' Control Systems	controls, experiment, framework, interface	982
	C. Gaspar CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Although they are LHC experiments, the four experiments, either by need or by choice, use different equipment, have defined different requirements and are operated differently. This led to the development of four quite different Control Systems. Although a joint effort was done in the area of Detector Control Systems (DCS) allowing a common choice of components and tools and achieving the development of a common DCS Framework for the four experiments, nothing was done in common in the areas of Data Acquisition or Trigger Control (normally called Run Control). This talk will present an overview of the design principles, architectures and technologies chosen by the four experiments in order to perform the Control System's tasks: Configuration, Control, Monitoring, Error Recovery, User Interfacing, Automation, etc. Invited
	Slides WECOAAB01 [2.616 MB]

WECOAAB02	Status of the ACS-based Control System of the Mid-sized Telescope Prototype for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA)	controls, software, interface, framework	987
	P.A. Wegner, B. Behera, D. Melkumyan, S. Schlenstedt, T. Schmidt, R. Sternberger, S. Wiesand DESY Zeuthen, Zeuthen, Germany O. Anguner, E. Birsin Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany M. Fuessling Universität Potsdam, Potsdam-Golm, Germany I. Oya, U. Schwanke Humboldt University Berlin, Institut für Physik, Berlin, Germany
	CTA as the next generation ground-based very-high-energy gamma-ray observatory is defining new areas beyond those related to physics; it is also creating new demands on the control and data acquisition system. With on the order of 100 telescopes spread over large area with numerous central facilities, CTA will comprise a significantly larger number of devices than any other current imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope experiment. A prototype for the Medium Size Telescope (MST) of a diameter of 12 m has been installed in Berlin and is currently being commissioned. The design of the control software of this telescope incorporates the main tools and concepts under evaluation within the CTA consortium in order to provide an array control prototype for the CTA project. The readout and control system for the MST prototype is implemented within the ALMA Common Software (ACS) framework. The interfacing to the hardware is performed via the OPen Connectivity-Unified Architecture (OPC UA). The archive system is based on MySQL and MongoDB. In this contribution the architecture of the MST control and data acquisition system, implementation details and first conclusions are presented.
	Slides WECOAAB02 [3.148 MB]

WECOBA06	Exploring No-SQL Alternatives for ALMA Monitoring System	database, hardware, insertion, software	1012
	T.C. Shen, A.I. Aguirre, A.J. Barrientos, M.H. Bartsch, J.P.A. Ibsen, M. Merino, L.I. Peña, R. Soto ALMA, Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago, Chile
	The Atacama Large Millimeter /submillimeter Array (ALMA) will be a unique research instrument composed of at least 66 reconfigurable high-precision antennas, located at the Chajnantor plain in the Chilean Andes at an elevation of 5000 m. This paper describes the experience gained after several years working with the monitoring system, which has the fundamental requirement to collect and storage up to 100K variables. The original design is built on top of a cluster of relational database server and network attached storage with fiber channel interface. As the number of monitoring points increases with the number of antennas included in the array, the current monitoring system has demonstrated to be able to handle the increased data rate in the collection and storage area, but the data query interface has started to suffered serious performance degradation. A solution based on no-SQL platform was explored as an alternative of the current long-term storage system, specifically mongoDB has been chosen. Intermediate cache servers based on Redis are also introduced to allow faster online data streaming of the most recent data to data analysis application and web based charts applications
	Slides WECOBA06 [0.916 MB]

THCOAAB06	Achieving a Successful Alarm Management Deployment – The CLS Experience	controls, operation, factory, software	1062
	E. D. Matias, L. Baribeau, T. Batten, J.W. Li, W.A. Wurtz CLS, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
	Alarm management systems promise to improve situational awareness, aid operational staff in correcting responding to accelerator problems and reduce downtime. Many facilities, including the Canadian Light Source (CLS), have been challenged in achieving this goal. At CLS past attempts focusing on software features and capabilities. Our third attempt switched gears and instead focused on human factors engineering techniques and the associated response processes to the alarm. Aspects of ISA 18,2, EEMUA 191 and NREG-700 standards were used. CLS adopted the CSS BEAST alarm handler software. Work was also undertaken to identify bad actors and analyzing alarm system performance and to avoid alarm flooding. The BEAST deployment was augmented with a locally developed voice annunciation system for a small number of critical high impact alarms and auto diallers for shutdown periods when the control room is not staffed. This paper summaries our approach and lessons learned.
	Slides THCOAAB06 [0.397 MB]

THPPC006	REMBRANDT - REMote Beam instRumentation And Network Diagnosis Tool	controls, database, network, status	1103
	T. Hoffmann, H. Bräuning GSI, Darmstadt, Germany
	As with any other large accelerator complex in operation today, the beam instrumentation devices and associated data acquisition components for the coming FAIR accelerators will be distributed over a large area and partially installed in inaccessible radiation exposed areas. Besides operation of the device itself, like acquisition of data, it is mandatory to control also the supporting LAN based components like VME/μTCA crates, front-end computers (FEC), middle ware servers and more. Fortunately many COTS systems provide means for remote control and monitoring using a variety of standardized protocols like SNMP, IPMI or iAMT. REMBRANDT is a Java framework, which allows the authorized user to monitor and control remote systems while hiding the underlying protocols and connection information such as ip addresses, user-ids and passwords. Beneath voltage and current control, the main features are the remote power switching of the systems and the reverse telnet boot process observation of FECs. REMBRANDT is designed to be easily extensible with new protocols and features. The software concept, including the client-server part and the database integration, will be presented.
	Poster THPPC006 [3.139 MB]

THPPC014	CMX - A Generic Solution to Expose Monitoring Metrics in C and C++ Applications	controls, real-time, diagnostics, operation	1118
	F. Ehm, Y. Fischer, G.M. Gorgogianni, S. Jensen, P. Jurcso CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	CERN’s Accelerator Control System is built upon a large number of C, C++ and Java services that are required for daily operation of the accelerator complex. The knowledge of the internal state of these processes is essential for problem diagnostic as well as for constant monitoring for pre-failure recognition. The CMX library follows similar principles as JMX (Java Management Extensions) and provides similar monitoring capabilities for C and C++ applications. It allows registering and exposing runtime information as simple counters, floating point numbers or character data. This can be subsequently used by external diagnostics tools for checking thresholds, sending alerts or trending. CMX uses shared-memory to ensure non-blocking read/update actions, which is an important requirement for real-time processes. This paper introduces the topic of monitoring C/C++ applications and presents CMX as a building block to achieve this goal.
	Poster THPPC014 [0.795 MB]

THPPC060	A PXI-Based Low Level Control for the Fast Pulsed Magnets in the CERN PS Complex	controls, kicker, FPGA, timing	1205
	J. Schipper, E. Carlier, T. Fowler, T. Gharsa CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Fast pulsed magnet (kicker) systems are used for beam injection and extraction in the CERN PS complex. A novel approach, based on off-the-shelf PXI components, has been used for the consolidation of the low level part of their control system. Typical functionalities required like interlocking, equipment state control, thyratron drift stabilisation and protection, short circuit detection in magnets and transmission lines, pulsed signal acquisition and fine timing have been successfully integrated within a PXI controller. The controller comprises a National Instruments NI PXI-810x RT real time processor, a multifunctional RIO module including a Virtex-5 LX30 FPGA, a 1 GS/s digitiser and a digital delay module with 1 ns resolution. National Instruments LabVIEW development tools have been used to develop the embedded real time software as well as FPGA configuration and expert application programs. The integration within the CERN controls environment is performed using the Rapid Application Development Environment (RADE) software tools, developed at CERN.
	Poster THPPC060 [0.887 MB]

THPPC065	Software System for Monitoring and Control at the Solenoid Test Facility	controls, operation, solenoid, database	1224
	J.M. Nogiec, R.H. Carcagno, S. Kotelnikov, K. Trombly-Freytag Fermilab, Batavia, USA
	Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. The architecture and implementation aspects of the control and monitoring system developed for Fermilab's new Solenoid Test Facility will be presented. At the heart of the system lies a highly configurable scan subsystem targeted at precise measurements of low temperatures with uniformly incorporated control elements. A multi-format archival system allows for the use of flat files, XML, and a relational database for storing data, and a Web-based application provides access to historical trends. The DAQ and computing platform includes COTS elements. The layered architecture separates the system into Windows operator stations, the real-time operating system-based DAQ and controls, and the FPGA-based time-critical and safety elements. The use of the EPICS CA protocol with LabVIEW opens the system to many available EPICS utilities .
	Poster THPPC065 [2.059 MB]

THPPC081	High-level Functions for Modern Control Systems: A Practical Example	controls, experiment, framework, status	1262
	F. Varela, W.J. Fabian, P. Golonka, M. Gonzalez-Berges, L.B. Petrova CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Modern control systems make wide usage of different IT technologies and complex computational techniques to render the data gathered accessible from different locations and devices, as well as to understand and even predict the behavior of the systems under supervision. The Industrial Controls Engineering (ICE) Group of the EN Department develops and maintains more than 150 vital controls applications for a number of strategic sectors at CERN like the accelerator, the experiments and the central infrastructure systems. All these applications are supervised by MOON, a very successful central monitoring and configuration tool developed by the group that has been in operation 24/7 since 2011. The basic functionality of MOON was presented in previous editions of these series of conferences. In this contribution we focus on the high-level functionality recently added to the tool to grant access to multiple users through the web and mobile devices to the data gathered, as well as a first attempt to data analytics with the goal of identifying useful information to support developers during the optimization of their systems and help in the daily operations of the systems.

THCOBA01	Evolution of the Monitoring in the LHCb Online System	database, status, interface, distributed	1408
	C. Haen, E. Bonaccorsi, N. Neufeld CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	The LHCb online system relies on a large and heterogeneous I.T. infrastructure : it comprises more than 2000 servers and embedded systems and more than 200 network devices. The low level monitoring of the equipment was originally done with Nagios. In 2011, we replaced the single Nagios instance with a distributed Icinga setup presented at ICALEPCS 2011. This paper will present with more hindsight the improvements we observed, as well as problems encountered. Finally, we will describe some of our prospects for the future after the Long Shutdown period, namely Shinken and Ganglia.
	Slides THCOBA01 [1.426 MB]

THCOBA03	DIAMON2 – Improved Monitoring of CERN’s Accelerator Controls Infrastructure	controls, GUI, data-acquisition, framework	1415
	W. Buczak, M. Buttner, F. Ehm, P. Jurcso, M. Mitev CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Monitoring of heterogeneous systems in large organizations like CERN is always challenging. CERN's accelerators infrastructure includes large number of equipment (servers, consoles, FECs, PLCs), some still running legacy software like LynxOS 4 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 on older hardware with very limited resources. DIAMON2 is based on CERN Common Monitoring platform. Using Java industry standards, notably Spring, Ehcache and the Java Message Service, together with a small footprint C++ -based monitoring agent for real time systems and wide variety of additional data acquisition components (SNMP, JMS, JMX etc.), DIAMON2 targets CERN’s environment, providing easily extensible, dynamically reconfigurable, reliable and scalable monitoring solution. This article explains the evolution of the CERN diagnostics and monitoring environment until DIAMON2, describes the overall system’s architecture, main components and their functionality as well as the first operational experiences with the new system, observed under the very demanding infrastructure of CERN’s accelerator complex.
	Slides THCOBA03 [1.209 MB]

THCOCB03	Fast Automatic Beam-based Alignment of the LHC Collimation System	alignment, collimation, feedback, operation	1430
	G. Valentino, R.W. Aßmann, R. Bruce, S. Jackson, S. Redaelli, B. Salvachua, D. Wollmann, C. Zamantzas CERN, Geneva, Switzerland N.J. Sammut University of Malta, Information and Communication Technology, Msida, Malta
	Maximum beam cleaning efficiency and LHC machine protection is provided when the collimator jaws are properly adjusted at well-defined distances from the circulating beams. The required settings for different locations around the 27 km long LHC rings are determined through beam-based collimator alignment, which uses feedback from Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system. After the first experience with beam, a systematic automation of the alignment procedure was performed. This paper gives an overview of the algorithms developed to speed up the alignment and reduce human errors. The experience accumulated in four years of operation, from 2010 to 2013 is reviewed.
	Slides THCOCB03 [13.293 MB]

THCOCB04	Using an Expert System for Accelerators Tuning and Automation of Operating Failure Checks	TANGO, controls, database, operation	1434
	M. Ounsy, S. Pierre-Joseph Zéphir, G. Viguier SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette, France E. De Ley iSencia Belgium, Gent, Belgium
	Today at SOLEIL abnormal operating conditions cost many human resources involved in plenty of manual checks on various different tools interacting with different service layers of the control system (archiving system, device drivers, etc.) before recovering a normal accelerators operation. These manual checks are also systematically redone before each beam shutdown and restart. All these repetitive tasks are very error prone and lead to a tremendous lack in the assessment of beam delivery to users. Due to the increased process complexity and the multiple unpredictable factors of instability in the accelerators operating conditions, the existing diagnosis tools and manual check procedures reached their limits to provide practical reliable assistance to both operators and accelerators physicists. The aim of this paper is to show how the advanced expert system layer of the PASERELLE* framework, using the CDMA API** to access in a uniform way all the underlying data sources provided by the control system, can be used to assist the operators in detecting and diagnosing abnormal conditions and thus providing safe guards against these unexpected accelerators operation conditions. http://www.isencia.be/services/passerelle *https://code.google.com/p/cdma/
	Slides THCOCB04 [1.636 MB]

Paper

Title

Other Keywords

Page

MOCOAAB06

MeerKAT Control and Monitoring - Design Concepts and Status

interface, hardware, controls, status

19

L. Van den Heever
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

Funding: National Research Foundation of South Africa
This presentation gives a status update of the MeerKAT Control & Monitoring subsystem focusing on the development philosophy, design concepts, technologies and key design decisions. The presentation will be supplemented by a poster (if accepted) with **live demonstation** of the current KAT-7 Control&Monitoring system. The vision for MeerKAT includes to a) use Offset Gregorian antennas in a radio telescope array combined with optimized receiver technology in order to achieve superior imaging and maximum sensitivity, b) be the most sensitive instrument in the world in L-band, c) be an instrument that will be considered the benchmark for performance and reliability by the scientific community at large, and d) be a true precursor for the SKA that will be integrated into the SKA-mid dish array. The 7-dish engineering prototype (KAT-7) for MeerKAT is already producing exciting science and is being operated 24x7. The first MeerKAT antenna will be on site by the end of this year and the first two Receptors will be fully integrated and ready for testing by April 2014. By December 2016 hardware for all 64 receptors will be installed and accepted and 32 antennas will be fully commissioned.

Slides MOCOAAB06 [1.680 MB]

MOPPC043

Development of the Thermal Beam Loss Monitors of the Spiral2 Control System

detector, EPICS, controls, FPGA

181

C.H. Haquin
GANIL, Caen, France
F. Negoita
IFIN, Magurele- Bucuresti, Romania

The Spiral2 linear accelerator will drive high intensity beams, up to 5mA, to up to 200kW at linac exit. Such beams can seriously damage and activate the machine ! To prevent from such situation, the Machine Protection System (MPS) has been designed. This system is connected to diagnostics indicating if the beam remains under specific limits. As soon as a diagnostic detects its limit is crossed, it informs the MPS which will in turn take actions that can lead to a beam cut-off in appropriated timing requirements. In this process, the Beam Loss Monitors (BLM) are involved in monitoring prompt radiation generated by beam particles interactions with beam line components and responsible for activation, on one side, and thermal effects, on the other side. BLM system relies mainly on scintillator detectors, NIM electronics and a VME subsystem monitoring the heating of the machine. This subsystem, also called «Thermal BLM», will be integrated in the Spiral2 EPICS environment. For its development, a specific project organization has been setup since the development is subcontracted to Cosylab. This paper focuses on the Thermal BLM controls aspects and describes this development process.

Poster MOPPC043 [0.957 MB]

MOPPC055

Revisiting CERN Safety System Monitoring (SSM)

network, PLC, database, status

218

T. Hakulinen, P. Ninin, R. Nunes, T.R. Riesco
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

CERN Safety System Monitoring (SSM) is a system for monitoring state-of-health of the various access and personnel safety systems at CERN since more than three years. SSM implements monitoring of different operating systems, network equipment, storage, and special devices like PLCs, front ends, etc. It is based on the monitoring framework Zabbix, which supports alert notifications, issue escalation, reporting, distributed management, and automatic scalability. The emphasis of SSM is on the needs of maintenance and system operation, where timely and reliable feedback directly from the systems themselves is important to quickly pinpoint immediate or creeping problems. A new application of SSM is to anticipate availability problems through predictive trending that allows to visualize and manage upcoming operational issues and infrastructure requirements. Work is underway to extend the scope of SSM to all access and safety systems managed by the access and safety team with upgrades to the monitoring methodology as well as to the visualization of results.

Poster MOPPC055 [1.537 MB]

MOPPC062

Real-Time System Supervision for the LHC Beam Loss Monitoring System at CERN

FPGA, detector, database, operation

242

C. Zamantzas, B. Dehning, E. Effinger, J. Emery, S. Jackson
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The strategy for machine protection and quench prevention of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) is mainly based on the Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system. The LHC BLM system is one of the most complex and large instrumentation systems deployed in the LHC. In addition to protecting the collider, the system also needs to provide a means of diagnosing machine faults and deliver feedback of the losses to the control room as well as to several systems for their setup and analysis. In order to augment the dependability of the system several layers of supervision has been implemented internally and externally to the system. This paper describes the different methods employed to achieve the expected availability and system fault detection.

MOPPC087

Tools and Rules to Encourage Quality for C/C++ Software

software, framework, controls, diagnostics

303

K. Sigerud, V. Baggiolini, J.C. Bau, S. Deghaye, J. Nguyen Xuan, X. Piroux, G. Sivatskiy, W. Sliwinski, I. Yastrebov
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Inspired by the success of the software improvement process for Java projects, in place since several years in the CERN accelerator controls group, it was agreed in 2011 to apply the same principles to the C/C++ software developed in the group, an initiative we call the Software Improvement Process for C/C++ software (SIP4C/C++). The objectives of the SIP4C/C++ initiative are: 1) agree on and establish best software quality practices, 2) choose tools for quality and 3) integrate these tools in the build process. After a year we have reached a number of concrete results, thanks to the collaboration between several involved projects, including: common build tool (based on GNU Make), which standardizes the way to build, test and release C/C++ binaries; unit testing with Google Test & Google Mock; continuous integration of C/C++ products with the existing CI server (Atlassian Bamboo); static code analysis (Coverity); generation of manifest file with dependency information; and runtime in-process metrics. This work presents the SIP4C/C++ initiative in more detail, summarizing our experience and the future plans.

Poster MOPPC087 [3.062 MB]

MOPPC088

Improving Code Quality of the Compact Muon Solenoid Electromagnetic Calorimeter Control Software to Increase System Maintainability

software, controls, GUI, detector

306

O. Holme, D.R.S. Di Calafiori, G. Dissertori, L. Djambazov, W. Lustermann, S. Zelepoukine
ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
S. Zelepoukine
UW-Madison/PD, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
The Detector Control System (DCS) software of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (ECAL) of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN is designed primarily to enable safe and efficient operation of the detector during Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data-taking periods. Through a manual analysis of the code and the adoption of ConQAT*, a software quality assessment toolkit, the CMS ECAL DCS team has made significant progress in reducing complexity and improving code quality, with observable results in terms of a reduction in the effort dedicated to software maintenance. This paper explains the methodology followed, including the motivation to adopt ConQAT, the specific details of how this toolkit was used and the outcomes that have been achieved.
* ConQAT, https://www.conqat.org/

Poster MOPPC088 [2.510 MB]

MOPPC100

SKA Monitioring and Control Progress Status

controls, operation, site, interface

340

S. Roy Chaudhuri, S. Natarajan
TRDDC, Pune, India
D. Barbosa
GRIT, Aveiro, Portugal
A. Bridger
ROE, UTAC, United Kingdom
T. Coiffard
GTD, Barcelona, Spain
Y. Gupta, Y.G. Wadadekar
NCRA, Pune, India
J.C. Guzman
CSIRO ATNF, Epping, Australia
V.K. Mohile
PSL, Pune, India
R. Smareglia
INAF-OAT, Trieste, Italy
L. Van den Heever
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa
S. Vrcic
DRAO, Penticton, British Columbia, Canada

The Monitoring and Control system for the SKA radio telescope is now moving from the conceptual design to the system requirements and design phase, with the formation of a consortium geared towards delivering the Telescope Manager (TM) work package. Recent program decisions regarding hosting of the telescope across two sites, Australia and South Africa, have brought in new challenges from the TM design perspective. These include strategy to leverage the individual capabilities of autonomous telescopes, and also integrating the existing precursor telescopes (ASKAP and MeerKat) with heterogenous technologies and approaches into the SKA. A key design goal from the viewpoint of minimizing development and lifecycle costs is to have a uniform architectural approach across the telescopes, and to maximize standardization of software and instrumentation across the systems, despite potential variations in system hardware and procurement arrangements among the participating countries. This paper discusses some of these challenges, and their mitigation approaches that the consortium intends to work upon, along with an update on the current status and progress on the overall TM work.

MOPPC140

High-Availability Monitoring and Big Data: Using Java Clustering and Caching Technologies to Meet Complex Monitoring Scenarios

distributed, software, controls, network

439

M. Bräger, M. Brightwell, E. Koufakis, R. Martini, A. Suwalska
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Monitoring and control applications face ever more demanding requirements: as both data sets and data rates continue to increase, non-functional requirements such as performance, availability and maintainability become more important. C2MON (CERN Control and Monitoring Platform) is a monitoring platform developed at CERN over the past few years. Making use of modern Java caching and clustering technologies, the platform supports multiple deployment architectures, from a simple 3-tier system to highly complex clustered solutions. In this paper we consider various monitoring scenarios and how the C2MON deployment strategy can be adapted to meet them.

Poster MOPPC140 [1.382 MB]

TUPPC013

Scaling Out of the MADOCA Database System for SACLA

database, controls, GUI, operation

574

T. Hirono, T. Hamano, A. Yamashita
JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken, Japan
T. Fukui, K. Hagihara, T. Maruyama, K. Nemoto, M. Yamaga
RIKEN/SPring-8, Hyogo, Japan

MADOCA was adopted for the control system of SACLA, and the MADOCA database system was designed as a copy of the database system in SPring-8. The system realized a high redundancy because the system had already tested in SPring-8. However the signals which the MADOCA system handles in SACLA are increasing drastically. And GUIs that require frequent database accesses were developed. The load of the database system increased, and the response of the systems delayed in some occasions. We investigated the bottle neck of the system. From the results of the investigation, we decided to distribute the access to two servers. The primary server handles present data and signal properties. The other handles archived data, and the data was mounted to the primary server as a proxy table. In this way, we could divide the load into two servers and clients such as GUI do not need any changes. We have tested the load and response of the system by adding 40000 signals to present 45000 signals, of which data acquisition intervals are typically 2 sec. The system was installed successfully and operating without any interruption which is caused by the high load of the database.

TUPPC021

Monitoring and Archiving of NSLS-II Booster Synchrotron Parameters

booster, controls, operation, EPICS

587

A.A. Derbenev, P.B. Cheblakov, R.A. Kadyrov, S.E. Karnaev, S.S. Serednyakov, E.A. Simonov
BINP SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia
M.A. Davidsaver
BNL, Upton, New York, USA

When operating a multicomponent system, it is always necessary to observe the state of a whole installation as well as of its components. Tracking data is essential to perform tuning and troubleshooting, so records of a work process generally have to be kept. As any other machine, the NSLS-II booster should have an implementation of monitoring and archiving schemes as a part of the control system. Because of the booster being a facility with a cyclical operation mode, there were additional challenges when designing and developing monitoring and archiving tools. Thorough analysis of available infrastructure and current approaches to monitoring and archiving was conducted to take into account additional needs that come from booster special characteristics. A software extension for values present in the control system allowed to track the state of booster subsystems and to perform an advanced archiving with multiple warning levels. Time stamping and data collecting strategies were developed as a part of monitoring scheme in order to preserve and recover read-backs and settings as consistent data sets. This paper describes relevant solutions incorporated in the booster control system.

Poster TUPPC021 [0.589 MB]

TUPPC023

MeerKAT Poster and Demo Control and Monitoring Highlights

controls, interface, hardware, software

594

C.C.A. de Villiers
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

The 64-dish MeerKAT Karoo Array Telescope, currently under development, will become the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere until the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is completed around 2024. MeerKAT will ultimately become an integral part of the SKA. The MeerKAT project will build on the techniques and experience acquired during the development of KAT-7, a 7-dish engineering prototype that has already proved its worth in practical use, operating 24/7 to deliver useful science data in the Karoo. Much of the MeerKAT development will centre on further refinement and scaling of the technology, using lessons learned from KAT-7. The poster session will present the proposed MeerKAT CAM (Control & Monitoring) architecture and highlight the solutions we are exploring for system monitoring, control and scheduling, data archiving and retrieval, and human interaction with the system. We will supplement the poster session with a live demonstration of the present KAT-7 CAM system. This will include a live video feed from the site as well as the use of the current GUI to generate and display the flow of events and data in a typical observation.

Poster TUPPC023 [0.471 MB]

TUPPC024

Challenges to Providing a Successful Central Configuration Service to Support CERN’s New Controls Diagnostics and Monitoring System

controls, database, diagnostics, framework

596

Z. Makonnen, M. Buttner, Z. Zaharieva
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The Controls Diagnostic and Monitoring service (DIAMON) provides monitoring and diagnostics tools to the operators in the CERN Control Centre. A recent reengineering presented the opportunity to restructure its data management and to integrate it with the central Controls Configuration Service (CCS). The CCS provides the Configuration Management for the Controls System for all accelerators at CERN. The new facility had to cater for the configuration management of all agents monitored by DIAMON, (>3000 computers of different types), provide deployment information, relations between metrics, and historical information. In addition, it had to be integrated into the operational CCS, while ensuring stability and data coherency. An important design decision was to largely reuse the existing infrastructure in the CCS and adapt the DIAMON data management to it e.g. by using the device/property model through a Virtual Devices framework to model the DIAMON agents. This article will show how these challenging requirements were successfully met, the problems encountered and their resolution. The new service architecture will be presented: database model, new and tailored processes and tools.

Poster TUPPC024 [2.741 MB]

TUPPC029

Integration, Processing, Analysis Methodologies and Tools for Ensuring High Data Quality and Rapid Data Access in the TIM* Monitoring System

database, real-time, controls, data-acquisition

615

A. Suwalska, M. Brightwell, M. Bräger, E. Koufakis, R. Martini, P. Sollander
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Processing, storing and analysing large amounts of real-time data is a challenge for every monitoring system. The performance of the system strongly depends on high quality configuration data and the ability of the system to cope with data anomalies. The Technical Infrastructure Monitoring system (TIM) addresses data quality issues by enforcing a workflow of strict procedures to integrate or modify data tag configurations. TIM’s data acquisition layer architecture allows real-time analysis and rejection of irrelevant data. The discarded raw data 90,000,000 transactions/day) are stored in a database, then purged after gathering statistics. The remaining operational data (2,000,000 transactions/day) are transferred to a server running an in-memory database, ensuring its rapid processing. These data are currently stored for 30 days allowing ad hoc historical data analysis. In this paper we describe the methods and tools used to guarantee the quality of configuration data and highlight the advanced architecture that ensures optimal access to operational data as well as the tools used to perform off-line data analysis.
* Technical Infrastructure Monitoring system

Poster TUPPC029 [0.742 MB]

TUPPC045

Software Development for High Speed Data Recording and Processing

detector, software, network, controls

665

D. Boukhelef, J. Szuba, K. Wrona, C. Youngman
XFEL. EU, Hamburg, Germany

Funding: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 283745.
The European XFEL beam delivery defines a unique time structure that requires acquiring and processing data in short bursts of up to 2700 images every 100 ms. The 2D pixel detectors being developed produce up to 10 GB/s of 1-Mpixel image data. Efficient handling of this huge data volume requires large network bandwidth and computing capabilities. The architecture of the DAQ system is hierarchical and modular. The DAQ network uses 10 GbE switched links to provide large bandwidth data transport between the front-end interfaces (FEI), data handling PC layer servers, and storage and analysis clusters. Front-end interfaces are required to build images acquired during a burst into pulse ordered image trains and forward them to PC layer farm. The PC layer consists of dedicated high-performance computers for raw data monitoring, processing and filtering, and aggregating data files that are then distributed to on-line storage and data analysis clusters. In this contribution we give an overview of the DAQ system architecture, communication protocols, as well as software stack for data acquisition pre-processing, monitoring, storage and analysis.

Poster TUPPC045 [1.323 MB]

TUPPC050

Control, Safety and Diagnostics for Future ATLAS Pixel Detectors

detector, controls, diagnostics, operation

679

S. Kersten, P. Kind, P. Mättig, L. Puellen, S. Weber, C. Zeitnitz
Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
F. Gensolen
CPPM, Marseille, France
S. Kovalenko, K. Lantzsch
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

To ensure the excellent performance of the ATLAS Pixel detector during the next run periods of the LHC, with increasing demands, two upgrades of the pixel detector are foreseen. One takes place in the first long shutdown, which is currently on-going. During this period an additional layer, the Insertable B-Layer, will be installed. The second upgrade will replace the entire pixel detector and is planed for 2020, when the LHC will be upgraded to HL-LHC. As once installed no access is possible over years, a highly reliable control system is required. It has to supply the detector with all entities required for operation, protect it at all times, and provide detailed information to diagnose the detector’s behaviour. Design constraints are the sensitivity of the sensors and reduction of material inside the tracker volume. We report on the construction of the control system for the Insertable B Layer and present a concept for the control of the pixel detector at the HL-LHC. While the latter requires completely new strategies, the control system of the IBL includes single new components, which can be developed further for the long-term upgrade.

Poster TUPPC050 [0.566 MB]

TUPPC063

Control and Monitoring of the Online Computer Farm for Offline Processing in LHCb

controls, network, experiment, interface

721

L.G. Cardoso, P. Charpentier, J. Closier, M. Frank, C. Gaspar, B. Jost, G. Liu, N. Neufeld
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
O. Callot
LAL, Orsay, France

LHCb, one of the 4 experiments at the LHC accelerator at CERN, uses approximately 1500 PCs (averaging 12 cores each) for processing the High Level Trigger (HLT) during physics data taking. During periods when data acquisition is not required most of these PCs are idle. In these periods it is possible to profit from the unused processing capacity to run offline jobs, such as Monte Carlo simulation. The LHCb offline computing environment is based on LHCbDIRAC (Distributed Infrastructure with Remote Agent Control). In LHCbDIRAC, job agents are started on Worker Nodes, pull waiting tasks from the central WMS (Workload Management System) and process them on the available resources. A Control System was developed which is able to launch, control and monitor the job agents for the offline data processing on the HLT Farm. This control system is based on the existing Online System Control infrastructure, the PVSS SCADA and the FSM toolkit. It has been extensively used launching and monitoring 22.000+ agents simultaneously and more than 850.000 jobs have already been processed in the HLT Farm. This paper describes the deployment and experience with the Control System in the LHCb experiment.

Poster TUPPC063 [2.430 MB]

TUPPC067

A Distributed Remote Monitoring System for ISIS Sample Environment

controls, EPICS, neutron, instrumentation

733

M.R.W. North, G.L. Burgess
STFC/RAL/ISIS, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, United Kingdom

The benefits of remote monitoring in industrial and manufacturing plants are well documented and equally applicable to scientific research facilities. This paper highlights the benefits of implementing a distributed monitoring system for sample environment equipment and instrumentation at the ISIS Neutron & Muon source facility. The upcoming implementation of an EPICS replacement for the existing beamline control system provides a timely opportunity to integrate operational monitoring and diagnostic capabilities with minimal overheads. The ISIS facility located at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory UK is the most productive research centre of its type in the world supporting a national and international community of more than 2000 scientists using neutrons and muons for research into materials and life sciences.

Poster TUPPC067 [0.821 MB]

TUPPC070

Detector Controls for the NOvA Experiment Using Acnet-in-a-Box

controls, detector, PLC, interface

740

D.J. Nicklaus, L.R. Carmichael, D. Finstrom, B. Hendricks, CA. King, W.L. Marsh, R. Neswold, J.F. Patrick, J.G. Smedinghoff, J. You
Fermilab, Batavia, USA

In recent years, we have packaged the Fermilab accelerator control system, Acnet, so that other instances of it can be deployed independent of the Fermilab infrastructure. This encapsulated "Acnet-in-a-Box" is installed as the detector control system at the NOvA Far Detector. NOvA is a neutrino experiment using a beam of particles produced by the Fermilab accelerators. There are two NOvA detectors: a 330 ton ‘‘Near Detector'' on the Fermilab campus and a 14000 ton ‘‘Far Detector'' 735 km away. All key tiers and aspects of Acnet are available in the NOvA instantiation, including the central device database, java Open Access Clients, erlang front-ends, application consoles, synoptic displays, data logging, and state notifications. Acnet at NOvA is used for power-supply control, monitoring position and strain gauges, environmental control, PLC supervision, relay rack monitoring, and interacting with Epics PVs instrumenting the detector's avalanche photo-diodes. We discuss the challenges of maintaining a control system in a remote location, synchronizing updates between the instances, and improvements made to Acnet as a result of our NOvA experience.

Poster TUPPC070 [0.876 MB]

TUPPC071

Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment: Controls and Monitoring

controls, EPICS, emittance, hardware

743

P.M. Hanlet
IIT, Chicago, Illinois, USA

The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment is a demonstration experiment to prove the feasibility of cooling a beam of muons for use in a Neutrino Factory and/or Muon Collider. The MICE cooling channel will produce a 10% reduction in beam emittance which will be measured with a 1% resolution, and this level of precision requires strict controls and monitoring of all experimental parameters to minimize systematic errors. The MICE Controls and Monitoring system is based on EPICS and integrates with the DAQ, data monitoring systems, a configuration database, and state machines for device operations. Run Control has been developed to ensure proper sequencing of equipment and use of system resources to protect data quality. State machines are used in test operations of cooling channel superconducting solenoids to set parameters for monitoring, alarms, and data archiving. A description of this system, its implementation and performance during both muon beam data collection and magnet training will be discussed.

Poster TUPPC071 [1.820 MB]

TUPPC111

Online Status and Settings Monitoring for the LHC Collimators

status, injection, collimation, operation

836

G. Valentino
University of Malta, Information and Communication Technology, Msida, Malta
R.W. Aßmann, D. Jacquet, S. Redaelli, E. Veyrunes
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The Large Hadron Collider is equipped with 100 movable collimators. The LHC collimator control system is responsible for the accurate synchronization of around 400 axes of motion at the microsecond level, and with the precision of a few micrometres. The status and settings of the collimators can be monitored by three displays in the CERN Control Center, each providing a different viewpoint onto the system and a different level of abstraction, such as the positions in mm or beam size units. Any errors and warnings are also displayed. In this paper, the display operation is described, as well as the interaction that occurs when an operator is required to identify and understand an error in the collimator settings.

Poster TUPPC111 [2.260 MB]

TUPPC120

LHC Collimator Alignment Operational Tool

alignment, collimation, controls, interface

860

G. Valentino, R.W. Aßmann, S. Redaelli
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
N.J. Sammut
University of Malta, Information and Communication Technology, Msida, Malta

Beam-based LHC collimator alignment is necessary to determine the beam centers and beam sizes at the collimator locations for various machine configurations. Fast and automatic alignment is provided through an operational tool has been developed for use in the CERN Control Center, which is described in this paper. The tool is implemented as a Java application, and acquires beam loss and collimator position data from the hardware through a middleware layer. The user interface is designed to allow for a quick transition from application start up, to selecting the required collimators for alignment and configuring the alignment parameters. The measured beam centers and sizes are then logged and displayed in different forms to help the user set up the system.

Poster TUPPC120 [2.464 MB]

TUPPC124

Distributed Network Monitoring Made Easy - An Application for Accelerator Control System Process Monitoring

network, controls, software, Linux

875

C.E. Peters, M.A. Power
ANL, Argonne, USA

Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
As the complexity and scope of distributed control systems increase, so does the need for an ever increasing level of automated process monitoring. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate one method whereby the SNMP protocol combined with open-source management tools can be quickly leveraged to gain critical insight into any complex computing system. Specifically, we introduce an automated, fully customizable, web-based remote monitoring solution which has been implemented at the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS). This collection of tools is not limited to only monitoring network infrastructure devices, but also to monitor critical processes running on any remote system. The tools and techniques used are typically available pre-installed or are available via download on several standard operating systems, and in most cases require only a small amount of configuration out of the box. High level logging, level-checking, alarming, notification and reporting is accomplished with the open source network management package OpenNMS, and normally requires a bare minimum of implementation effort by a non-IT user.

Poster TUPPC124 [0.875 MB]

TUPPC129

NIF Device Health Monitoring

controls, GUI, framework, status

887

R. Fleming, C.M. Estes, J.M. Fisher, E.A. Stout
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA

Funding: * This work was performed under the auspices of the Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, (LLNS) under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344. #LLNL-ABS-633794
The Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) uses Front-End Processors (FEP) controlling over 60,000 devices. Often device faults are not discovered until a device is needed during a shot, creating run-time errors that delay the laser shot. This paper discusses a new ICCS framework feature for FEPs to monitor devices and report its overall health, allowing for problem devices to be identified before they are needed. Each FEP has different devices and a unique definition of healthy. The ICCS software uses an object oriented approach using polymorphism so FEP’s can determine their health status and report it in a consistent way. This generic approach provides consistent GUI indication and the display of detailed information of device problems. It allows for operators to be informed quickly of faults and provides them with the information necessary to pin point and resolve issues. Operators now know before starting a shot if the control system is ready, thereby reducing time and material lost due to a failure and improving overall control system reliability and availability.

Poster TUPPC129 [2.318 MB]

TUCOCA06

Current Status of a Carborne Survey System, KURAMA

survey, radiation, operation, detector

926

M. Tanigaki, Y. Kobayashi, R. Okumua, N. Sato, K. Takamiya, H. Yoshinaga, H. Yoshino
Kyoto University, Research Reactor Institute, Osaka, Japan

A carborne survey system named as KURAMA (Kyoto University RAdiation MApping system) has been developed as a response to the nuclear accident at TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. Now the system evolved into a CompactRIO-based KURAMA-II, and serves for the various types of applications. More than a hundred of KURAMA-II are deployed for the periodical drawing of the radiation map in the East Japan by Japanese government. A continuous radiation monitoring by KURAMA-II on local buses is started in Fukushima prefecture as the collaboration project among Kyoto University, Fukushima prefectural government, and JAEA. Extended applications such as precise radiation mappings in farmlands and parks are also on the way. The present status and future prospects of KURAMA and KURAMA-II are introduced.

TUCOCA08

Personnel and Machine Protection Systems in The National Ignition Facility (NIF)

target, controls, laser, operation

933

R.K. Reed, J.C. Bell
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA

Funding: * This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. #LLNL-ABS-633232
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world’s largest and most energetic laser system and has the potential to generate significant levels of ionizing radiation. The NIF employs real time safety systems to monitor and mitigate the potential hazards presented by the facility. The Machine Safety System (MSS) monitors key components in the facility to allow operations while also protecting against configurations that could damage equipment. The NIF Safety Interlock System (SIS) monitors for oxygen deficiency, radiological alarms, and controls access to the facility preventing exposure to laser light and radiation. Together the SIS and MSS control permissives to the hazard generating equipment and annunciate hazard levels in the facility. To do this reliably and safely, the SIS and MSS have been designed as fail safe systems with a proven performance record now spanning over 12 years. This presentation discusses the SIS and MSS, design, implementation, operator interfaces, validation/verification, and the hazard mitigation approaches employed in the NIF. A brief discussion of common failures encountered in the design of safety systems and how to avoid them will be presented.

Slides TUCOCA08 [2.808 MB]

WECOAAB01

An Overview of the LHC Experiments' Control Systems

controls, experiment, framework, interface

982

C. Gaspar
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Although they are LHC experiments, the four experiments, either by need or by choice, use different equipment, have defined different requirements and are operated differently. This led to the development of four quite different Control Systems. Although a joint effort was done in the area of Detector Control Systems (DCS) allowing a common choice of components and tools and achieving the development of a common DCS Framework for the four experiments, nothing was done in common in the areas of Data Acquisition or Trigger Control (normally called Run Control). This talk will present an overview of the design principles, architectures and technologies chosen by the four experiments in order to perform the Control System's tasks: Configuration, Control, Monitoring, Error Recovery, User Interfacing, Automation, etc.
Invited

Slides WECOAAB01 [2.616 MB]

WECOAAB02

Status of the ACS-based Control System of the Mid-sized Telescope Prototype for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA)

controls, software, interface, framework

987

P.A. Wegner, B. Behera, D. Melkumyan, S. Schlenstedt, T. Schmidt, R. Sternberger, S. Wiesand
DESY Zeuthen, Zeuthen, Germany
O. Anguner, E. Birsin
Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
M. Fuessling
Universität Potsdam, Potsdam-Golm, Germany
I. Oya, U. Schwanke
Humboldt University Berlin, Institut für Physik, Berlin, Germany

CTA as the next generation ground-based very-high-energy gamma-ray observatory is defining new areas beyond those related to physics; it is also creating new demands on the control and data acquisition system. With on the order of 100 telescopes spread over large area with numerous central facilities, CTA will comprise a significantly larger number of devices than any other current imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope experiment. A prototype for the Medium Size Telescope (MST) of a diameter of 12 m has been installed in Berlin and is currently being commissioned. The design of the control software of this telescope incorporates the main tools and concepts under evaluation within the CTA consortium in order to provide an array control prototype for the CTA project. The readout and control system for the MST prototype is implemented within the ALMA Common Software (ACS) framework. The interfacing to the hardware is performed via the OPen Connectivity-Unified Architecture (OPC UA). The archive system is based on MySQL and MongoDB. In this contribution the architecture of the MST control and data acquisition system, implementation details and first conclusions are presented.

Slides WECOAAB02 [3.148 MB]

WECOBA06

Exploring No-SQL Alternatives for ALMA Monitoring System

database, hardware, insertion, software

1012

T.C. Shen, A.I. Aguirre, A.J. Barrientos, M.H. Bartsch, J.P.A. Ibsen, M. Merino, L.I. Peña, R. Soto
ALMA, Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago, Chile

The Atacama Large Millimeter /submillimeter Array (ALMA) will be a unique research instrument composed of at least 66 reconfigurable high-precision antennas, located at the Chajnantor plain in the Chilean Andes at an elevation of 5000 m. This paper describes the experience gained after several years working with the monitoring system, which has the fundamental requirement to collect and storage up to 100K variables. The original design is built on top of a cluster of relational database server and network attached storage with fiber channel interface. As the number of monitoring points increases with the number of antennas included in the array, the current monitoring system has demonstrated to be able to handle the increased data rate in the collection and storage area, but the data query interface has started to suffered serious performance degradation. A solution based on no-SQL platform was explored as an alternative of the current long-term storage system, specifically mongoDB has been chosen. Intermediate cache servers based on Redis are also introduced to allow faster online data streaming of the most recent data to data analysis application and web based charts applications

Slides WECOBA06 [0.916 MB]

THCOAAB06

Achieving a Successful Alarm Management Deployment – The CLS Experience

controls, operation, factory, software

1062

E. D. Matias, L. Baribeau, T. Batten, J.W. Li, W.A. Wurtz
CLS, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Alarm management systems promise to improve situational awareness, aid operational staff in correcting responding to accelerator problems and reduce downtime. Many facilities, including the Canadian Light Source (CLS), have been challenged in achieving this goal. At CLS past attempts focusing on software features and capabilities. Our third attempt switched gears and instead focused on human factors engineering techniques and the associated response processes to the alarm. Aspects of ISA 18,2, EEMUA 191 and NREG-700 standards were used. CLS adopted the CSS BEAST alarm handler software. Work was also undertaken to identify bad actors and analyzing alarm system performance and to avoid alarm flooding. The BEAST deployment was augmented with a locally developed voice annunciation system for a small number of critical high impact alarms and auto diallers for shutdown periods when the control room is not staffed. This paper summaries our approach and lessons learned.

Slides THCOAAB06 [0.397 MB]

THPPC006

REMBRANDT - REMote Beam instRumentation And Network Diagnosis Tool

controls, database, network, status

1103

T. Hoffmann, H. Bräuning
GSI, Darmstadt, Germany

As with any other large accelerator complex in operation today, the beam instrumentation devices and associated data acquisition components for the coming FAIR accelerators will be distributed over a large area and partially installed in inaccessible radiation exposed areas. Besides operation of the device itself, like acquisition of data, it is mandatory to control also the supporting LAN based components like VME/μTCA crates, front-end computers (FEC), middle ware servers and more. Fortunately many COTS systems provide means for remote control and monitoring using a variety of standardized protocols like SNMP, IPMI or iAMT. REMBRANDT is a Java framework, which allows the authorized user to monitor and control remote systems while hiding the underlying protocols and connection information such as ip addresses, user-ids and passwords. Beneath voltage and current control, the main features are the remote power switching of the systems and the reverse telnet boot process observation of FECs. REMBRANDT is designed to be easily extensible with new protocols and features. The software concept, including the client-server part and the database integration, will be presented.

Poster THPPC006 [3.139 MB]

THPPC014

CMX - A Generic Solution to Expose Monitoring Metrics in C and C++ Applications

controls, real-time, diagnostics, operation

1118

F. Ehm, Y. Fischer, G.M. Gorgogianni, S. Jensen, P. Jurcso
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

CERN’s Accelerator Control System is built upon a large number of C, C++ and Java services that are required for daily operation of the accelerator complex. The knowledge of the internal state of these processes is essential for problem diagnostic as well as for constant monitoring for pre-failure recognition. The CMX library follows similar principles as JMX (Java Management Extensions) and provides similar monitoring capabilities for C and C++ applications. It allows registering and exposing runtime information as simple counters, floating point numbers or character data. This can be subsequently used by external diagnostics tools for checking thresholds, sending alerts or trending. CMX uses shared-memory to ensure non-blocking read/update actions, which is an important requirement for real-time processes. This paper introduces the topic of monitoring C/C++ applications and presents CMX as a building block to achieve this goal.

Poster THPPC014 [0.795 MB]

THPPC060

A PXI-Based Low Level Control for the Fast Pulsed Magnets in the CERN PS Complex

controls, kicker, FPGA, timing

1205

J. Schipper, E. Carlier, T. Fowler, T. Gharsa
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Fast pulsed magnet (kicker) systems are used for beam injection and extraction in the CERN PS complex. A novel approach, based on off-the-shelf PXI components, has been used for the consolidation of the low level part of their control system. Typical functionalities required like interlocking, equipment state control, thyratron drift stabilisation and protection, short circuit detection in magnets and transmission lines, pulsed signal acquisition and fine timing have been successfully integrated within a PXI controller. The controller comprises a National Instruments NI PXI-810x RT real time processor, a multifunctional RIO module including a Virtex-5 LX30 FPGA, a 1 GS/s digitiser and a digital delay module with 1 ns resolution. National Instruments LabVIEW development tools have been used to develop the embedded real time software as well as FPGA configuration and expert application programs. The integration within the CERN controls environment is performed using the Rapid Application Development Environment (RADE) software tools, developed at CERN.

Poster THPPC060 [0.887 MB]

THPPC065

Software System for Monitoring and Control at the Solenoid Test Facility

controls, operation, solenoid, database

1224

J.M. Nogiec, R.H. Carcagno, S. Kotelnikov, K. Trombly-Freytag
Fermilab, Batavia, USA

Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The architecture and implementation aspects of the control and monitoring system developed for Fermilab's new Solenoid Test Facility will be presented. At the heart of the system lies a highly configurable scan subsystem targeted at precise measurements of low temperatures with uniformly incorporated control elements. A multi-format archival system allows for the use of flat files, XML, and a relational database for storing data, and a Web-based application provides access to historical trends. The DAQ and computing platform includes COTS elements. The layered architecture separates the system into Windows operator stations, the real-time operating system-based DAQ and controls, and the FPGA-based time-critical and safety elements. The use of the EPICS CA protocol with LabVIEW opens the system to many available EPICS utilities .

Poster THPPC065 [2.059 MB]

THPPC081

High-level Functions for Modern Control Systems: A Practical Example

controls, experiment, framework, status

1262

F. Varela, W.J. Fabian, P. Golonka, M. Gonzalez-Berges, L.B. Petrova
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Modern control systems make wide usage of different IT technologies and complex computational techniques to render the data gathered accessible from different locations and devices, as well as to understand and even predict the behavior of the systems under supervision. The Industrial Controls Engineering (ICE) Group of the EN Department develops and maintains more than 150 vital controls applications for a number of strategic sectors at CERN like the accelerator, the experiments and the central infrastructure systems. All these applications are supervised by MOON, a very successful central monitoring and configuration tool developed by the group that has been in operation 24/7 since 2011. The basic functionality of MOON was presented in previous editions of these series of conferences. In this contribution we focus on the high-level functionality recently added to the tool to grant access to multiple users through the web and mobile devices to the data gathered, as well as a first attempt to data analytics with the goal of identifying useful information to support developers during the optimization of their systems and help in the daily operations of the systems.

THCOBA01

Evolution of the Monitoring in the LHCb Online System

database, status, interface, distributed

1408

C. Haen, E. Bonaccorsi, N. Neufeld
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The LHCb online system relies on a large and heterogeneous I.T. infrastructure : it comprises more than 2000 servers and embedded systems and more than 200 network devices. The low level monitoring of the equipment was originally done with Nagios. In 2011, we replaced the single Nagios instance with a distributed Icinga setup presented at ICALEPCS 2011. This paper will present with more hindsight the improvements we observed, as well as problems encountered. Finally, we will describe some of our prospects for the future after the Long Shutdown period, namely Shinken and Ganglia.

Slides THCOBA01 [1.426 MB]

THCOBA03

DIAMON2 – Improved Monitoring of CERN’s Accelerator Controls Infrastructure

controls, GUI, data-acquisition, framework

1415

W. Buczak, M. Buttner, F. Ehm, P. Jurcso, M. Mitev
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Monitoring of heterogeneous systems in large organizations like CERN is always challenging. CERN's accelerators infrastructure includes large number of equipment (servers, consoles, FECs, PLCs), some still running legacy software like LynxOS 4 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 on older hardware with very limited resources. DIAMON2 is based on CERN Common Monitoring platform. Using Java industry standards, notably Spring, Ehcache and the Java Message Service, together with a small footprint C++ -based monitoring agent for real time systems and wide variety of additional data acquisition components (SNMP, JMS, JMX etc.), DIAMON2 targets CERN’s environment, providing easily extensible, dynamically reconfigurable, reliable and scalable monitoring solution. This article explains the evolution of the CERN diagnostics and monitoring environment until DIAMON2, describes the overall system’s architecture, main components and their functionality as well as the first operational experiences with the new system, observed under the very demanding infrastructure of CERN’s accelerator complex.

Slides THCOBA03 [1.209 MB]

THCOCB03

Fast Automatic Beam-based Alignment of the LHC Collimation System

alignment, collimation, feedback, operation

1430

G. Valentino, R.W. Aßmann, R. Bruce, S. Jackson, S. Redaelli, B. Salvachua, D. Wollmann, C. Zamantzas
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
N.J. Sammut
University of Malta, Information and Communication Technology, Msida, Malta

Maximum beam cleaning efficiency and LHC machine protection is provided when the collimator jaws are properly adjusted at well-defined distances from the circulating beams. The required settings for different locations around the 27 km long LHC rings are determined through beam-based collimator alignment, which uses feedback from Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system. After the first experience with beam, a systematic automation of the alignment procedure was performed. This paper gives an overview of the algorithms developed to speed up the alignment and reduce human errors. The experience accumulated in four years of operation, from 2010 to 2013 is reviewed.

Slides THCOCB03 [13.293 MB]

THCOCB04

Using an Expert System for Accelerators Tuning and Automation of Operating Failure Checks

TANGO, controls, database, operation

1434

M. Ounsy, S. Pierre-Joseph Zéphir, G. Viguier
SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
E. De Ley
iSencia Belgium, Gent, Belgium

Today at SOLEIL abnormal operating conditions cost many human resources involved in plenty of manual checks on various different tools interacting with different service layers of the control system (archiving system, device drivers, etc.) before recovering a normal accelerators operation. These manual checks are also systematically redone before each beam shutdown and restart. All these repetitive tasks are very error prone and lead to a tremendous lack in the assessment of beam delivery to users. Due to the increased process complexity and the multiple unpredictable factors of instability in the accelerators operating conditions, the existing diagnosis tools and manual check procedures reached their limits to provide practical reliable assistance to both operators and accelerators physicists. The aim of this paper is to show how the advanced expert system layer of the PASERELLE* framework, using the CDMA API** to access in a uniform way all the underlying data sources provided by the control system, can be used to assist the operators in detecting and diagnosing abnormal conditions and thus providing safe guards against these unexpected accelerators operation conditions.
*http://www.isencia.be/services/passerelle
**https://code.google.com/p/cdma/

Slides THCOCB04 [1.636 MB]