A lightweight analysis farm for fundamental physics experiments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable, lightweight analysis facility designed for small-scale physics collaborations, integrating grid resources and secure access to improve efficiency and reproducibility.

Contribution

It presents a novel, maintainable analysis infrastructure tailored for small collaborations, demonstrating its architecture, services, and potential as a sustainable blueprint.

Findings

Successful integration of grid computing and storage resources

Enhanced reproducibility and efficiency for small collaborations

A sustainable, user-friendly analysis environment

Abstract

Scientific collaborations require a strong computing infrastructure to successfully process and analyze data. While large-scale collaborations have access to resources such as Analysis Facilities, small-scale collaborations often lack the resources to establish and maintain such an infrastructure and instead operate with fragmented analysis environments, resulting in inefficiencies, hindering reproducibility and thus creating additional challenges for the collaboration that are not related to the experiment itself. We present a scalable, lightweight and maintainable Analysis Facility developed for the DARWIN collaboration as an example study case. Grid computing and storage resources are integrated into the facility, allowing for distributed computing and a common entry point for storage. The authentication and authorization infrastructure for all services is token-based, using an Indigo IAM instance. We discuss the architecture of the facility, its provided services, the user experience, and how it can serve as a sustainable blueprint for small-scale collaborations.