A Cloud-native Agile approach to cyber platform prototyping and integration for astronomy: the ENGAGE SKA case

TL;DR

This paper discusses a cloud-native, agile approach to developing and integrating cyberinfrastructure for the SKA Observatory, emphasizing prototyping and software lifecycle management to handle large-scale, distributed radio telescope systems.

Contribution

It introduces a cloud-native, agile prototyping methodology for SKA's cyberinfrastructure, enhancing scalability, control, and operational efficiency in large-scale radio astronomy projects.

Findings

Successful implementation of agile prototyping for SKA cyberinfrastructure

Enhanced scalability and control in telescope software systems

Support for SKA's software development lifecycle and operational goals

Abstract

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory is gearing up the formal construction of its two radio interferometers in Australia and South Africa after the end of design and pre-construction phases. Agile methodologies, the Cloud native Computing technologies and the DevOps software ideas are influencing the design of compute infrastructures that will be key to reduce the operational costs of SKA while improving the control and monitoring of the SKA antennas and ancillary systems, Correlators, HPC facilities or related data centre tiered systems. These tools will likely include advanced power metering technologies and efficient distribution automation and Network Operation Centres (NOC). SKA will become the world's largest radio telescope and is expected to achieve its first science by 2026. To cope with this dimension and complexity, a key part of this distributed Observatory is the overall software control and monitoring system embodied in the Observatory Management and Control (OMC) and the Services Teams that requires specialized Agile Teams to assist in software and cyber infrastructure building using an Agile development environment that includes test automation, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Deployment. To manage such a large and distributed machine, the Agile approach was adopted for the core software package of the SKA Telescope aimed at scheduling observations, controlling their execution, monitoring the telescope status and ensuring scalability and reliability. Here, we report on the ENGAGE SKA ciberinfrastructure prototyping support to the SKA Agile Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).