Commitments and Major Issues on Controls Services

1. Commitments and Major Issues on Controls Services H.Schmickler Chamonix@divonne.2006

2. Outline Although Chamonix@Divonne is meant to be a technical/scientific meeting, with the charge of the session chairman this talk is almost a“2006-MAPS” of AB-CO…. • New AB-CO organigram • List of AB-CO activities/projects for the LHC • Particular issues • Calendar of upcoming events H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

3. The main criteria for the new AB-CO organigram • Sections of more equal size. • More sections in order to reduce the size of each section …going very far in this approach would produce other negative effects…in the end we go from 6 to 8 sections • Reduction of section interdependencies: • Section types core activityservicesinterlocks • Succession planning for next 3 years • Avoidance of double efforts (example: PLCs) • Steady replacement of piquet members by newcomers. • Sections localized in a single place : • significant extension of pavilion • move of people from 864 to the pavilion H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

4. stays stays splits into 2 Merged into 3 other sections splits into 2 splits into 2 (+ several persons merged into other sections) 2005 AB-CO Organigram H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

5. New AB-CO Organigram H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

6. General comments for the following slides: • The AB-CO group has just recently been restructured in order to meet the requirements of the LHC without asking (and getting) the additional staff as requested during the past 2 years • AB-CO gives highest priority to the Controls core activity, i.e. Applications, Business layer and services, Front-Ends, Timing • The presented “prioritized and staged” list of requirements does not help, since almost everything is at highest priority. Since this mechanism does not work, the result will not be “planified regulation”, but “regulation by saturation”. • The real bootle-neck are the applications, additional temporary human resources are needed (and hard to find). Still a much closer collaboration between AB-CO and AB-OP is needed. • In the following table the definition is as follows:For every activity, for which there is no particular “issue” mentioned, this means, that AB-CO will deliver the requested functionality in time. H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

7. Activities/Projects in the AP sectionE. Hatziangeli H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

8. Activities/Projects in the DM sectionR. Billen H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

9. Activities/Projects in the FE section M. van den Eynden H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

10. Activities/Projects in the HT sectionJ. Serrano H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

11. Activities/Projects in the IN sectionP. Charrue H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

12. Activities/Projects in the IS sectionPh. Gayet H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

13. Activities/Projects in the MA sectionA. Rijllart H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

14. Activities/Projects in the MI sectionB. Puccio H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

15. Activities/Projects continued H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

16. Particular Issues • completely uncovered activities: none • activities with critical HR coverage • software release policy • performance issues of LHC control system: AB-CO needs the deadline of the sector test for major validation/tests on scalability • plan B: none H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

17. LHC Activities in AB-CO with critical HR coverage • Predominately: application software- CERN staff missing to cover and assure continuity on critical core systems- 3 (LSA) + 2 (HWC) temporary programmers needed: very difficult to get people with the right profile and who at the same time accept to be paid as project associate.- space and coordination issues AB-CO and AB-OP • Beam interlock controller: covered, but not by CERN staff H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

18. Client Tier Appli- cations JAPC JAPC cmwrda LHC control system Architecture Business Tier (Web Container) macsy client Remote HTTP Layer macsy client impl accsoft-settings DAO Hibernate Datastore accsoft-optics macsy-generation macsy-sequence macsy-trim macsy-exploitation Devices JAPC JAPC remote client JAPC remote server Parameters concentration JAPC cmw- rda H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

19. Software release policy • FESA framework: Deliberate choice for a heavy versioning system with well announced and controlled version releases. Intensive testing of new functionality (presently about 2 weeks!) before release. Very slow reactivity. • Applications: Powerful versioning system in place, which allows AB-OP to choose between previous/present/new version of application code.Still: no deployment of quick fixes without going through the release procedure H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

20. Performance issues of the LHC controls system • Still doubts expressed by some “field experts” on the performance of the application servers under full and realistic load of JAVA based programs. In case of problems this can be fixed by buying more hardware. • Scalability of the controls system: Big issue: A realistic test would mean a concerted effort of the whole department. There is clearly no time to organize this in addition. We NEED the sector test as deadline and as natural concerted effort of the department.If the system does not scale, fixes by reprogramming certain services have to be developed! H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne

21. Calendar of upcoming events: • Until March 2006: AB-CO responsible (see tables) agrees with equipment groups on time scales for the availability of hardware for system tests. • February 2006: AB-CO proposes a “2-3 half day workshop” to finalize the design of the full LHC+SPS controls system. This event has to put an end to all the recurrent discussions on “old PS way of doing controls” versus “old SL way of doing controls”.Main actors: AB-CO + AB-OP + one rep. of each AB-equipment group • February 2006: FESA release 2.7 with the functionality needed for machines start-up 2006 • Spring 2006: Machines start-up from the CCC. H.Schmickler - Chamonix@Divonne