Phenomenology Tools on Cloud Infrastructures using OpenStack

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cloud-based environment for particle physics phenomenology computations using OpenStack, enabling easy deployment of tools on virtual machines and analyzing performance impacts compared to physical hardware.

Contribution

It presents a novel cloud infrastructure setup for phenomenology calculations with performance analysis of virtual versus physical hardware.

Findings

Virtual machines enable easier deployment of phenomenology tools.

Performance varies depending on host operating system.

Virtual environment performance is comparable to physical hardware.

Abstract

We present a new environment for computations in particle physics phenomenology employing recent developments in cloud computing. On this environment users can create and manage "virtual" machines on which the phenomenology codes/tools can be deployed easily in an automated way. We analyze the performance of this environment based on "virtual" machines versus the utilization of "real" physical hardware. In this way we provide a qualitative result for the influence of the host operating system on the performance of a representative set of applications for phenomenology calculations.