Operating the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid: current and future challenges

Abstract

The Wordwide LHC Computing Grid project (WLCG) provides the computing and storage resources required by the LHC collaborations to store, process and analyse their data. It includes almost 200,000 CPU cores, 200 PB of disk storage and 200 PB of tape storage distributed among more than 150 sites. The WLCG operations team is responsible for several essential tasks, such as the coordination of testing and deployment of Grid middleware and services, communication with the experiments and the sites, followup and resolution of operational issues and medium/long term planning. In 2012 WLCG critically reviewed all operational procedures and restructured the organisation of the operations team as a more coherent effort in order to improve its efficiency. In this paper we describe how the new organisation works, its recent successes and the changes to be implemented during the long LHC shutdown in preparation for the LHC Run 2.