Last week saw the CernVM Users Workshop take place at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom. Users and developers from around the world (including many from GridPP) came along to discuss the current status of the CernVM ecosystem and what future developments should focus on. There was a particular focus on integration with container technology – such as Docker – and how this could help with the shift to the cloud computing that has been so readily embraced by the High Energy Physics (HEP) computing world and beyond.
Attendees of the CernVM Users Workshop 2016 at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, UK. Credit: C. Condurache 2016.
As well as updates from the CernVM developers – such as the status of the CernVM ecosystem and new technologies – there were sessions dedicated to feedback from CernVM users such as ESA’s Euclid mission, volunteer computing, and CERN@school, as well as the LHC experiments. In summary, most users reported tremendous success with distributing their experiment software throughout their respective infrastructures, and were encouraged by news of developments such as secure repositories and using the CernVM File System (CernVM-FS) for data distribution. Finally, the third day saw a number of hands-on workshops take place, which was a great opportunity for developers and users to interact and get to grips with the latest features of CernVM. We’re looking forward to next year’s event already!
Huge thanks to Catalin Condurache for making the event such a success and to the STFC Scientific Computing Department (SCD) and the GridPP Collaboration for supporting the event.