CERN computing resources lifecycle management

Abstract

Computing environments in High Energy Physics are typically complex and heterogeneous, with a wide variety of hardware resources, operating systems and applications. The research activity in all its aspects is carried out by international collaborations constituted by a growing number of participants with a high manpower turnover. These factors can increase the administrative workload required to manage the computing infrastructure and to track resource usage and inheritance. It is therefore necessary to rationalize and formalize the computing resources management, while respecting the requirement of flexibility of scientific applications and services. This paper shows how during the last years the CERN computing infrastructure has been moving in this direction, establishing well-defined policies and lifecycles for resource management. Applications are being migrated towards proposed common identity, authentication and authorization models, reducing their complexity while increasing security and usability. Regular tasks like the creation of primary user accounts are being automated, and self-service facilities are being introduced for common operations, like creation of additional accounts, group subscriptions and password reset. This approach is leading to more efficient and manageable systems.