The CMS Remote Analysis Builder (CRAB)

Abstract

The CMS experiment will produce several Pbytes of data every year, to be distributed over many computing centers geographically distributed in different countries. Analysis of this data will be also performed in a distributed way, using grid infrastructure. CRAB (CMS Remote Analysis Builder) is a specific tool, designed and developed by the CMS collaboration, that allows a transparent access to distributed data to end physicist. Very limited knowledge of underlying technicalities are required to the user. CRAB interacts with the local user environment, the CMS Data Management services and with the Grid middleware. It is able to use WLCG, gLite and OSG middleware. CRAB has been in production and in routine use by end-users since Spring 2004. It has been extensively used in studies to prepare the Physics Technical Design Report (PTDR) and in the analysis of reconstructed event samples generated during the Computing Software and Analysis Challenge (CSA06). This involved generating thousands of jobs per day at peak rates. In this paper we discuss the current implementation of CRAB, the experience with using it in production and the plans to improve it in the immediate future.