ICALEPCS2013 - List of Authors (Jensen, S.)

Paper

Title

Page

Advantages and Challenges to the Use of On-line Feedback in CERN’s Accelerators Controls Configuration Management

600

Z. Zaharieva, S. Jensen, J. Rolland Lopez De Coca, A. Romero Marin
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The Controls Configuration Service (CCS) provides the Configuration Management facilities for the Controls System for all CERN accelerators. It complies with Configuration Management standards, tracking the life of configuration items and their relationships by allowing identification and triggering change management processes. Data stored in the CCS is extracted and propagated to the controls hardware for remote configuration. The article will present the ability of the CCS to audit items and verify conformance to specification with the implementation of on-line feedback focusing on Front-End Computers (FEC) configurations. Long-standing problems existed in this area such as discrepancies between the actual state of the FEC and the configuration sent to it at reboot. This resulted in difficult-to-diagnose behaviour and disturbance for the Operations team. The article will discuss the solution architecture (tailored processes and tools), the development and implementation challenges, as well as the advantages of this approach and the benefits to the user groups – from equipment specialists and controls systems experts to the operators in the Accelerators Controls Centre.

Poster TUPPC025 [3.937 MB]

THPPC014

CMX - A Generic Solution to Expose Monitoring Metrics in C and C++ Applications

1118

F. Ehm, Y. Fischer, G.M. Gorgogianni, S. Jensen, P. Jurcso
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

CERN’s Accelerator Control System is built upon a large number of C, C++ and Java services that are required for daily operation of the accelerator complex. The knowledge of the internal state of these processes is essential for problem diagnostic as well as for constant monitoring for pre-failure recognition. The CMX library follows similar principles as JMX (Java Management Extensions) and provides similar monitoring capabilities for C and C++ applications. It allows registering and exposing runtime information as simple counters, floating point numbers or character data. This can be subsequently used by external diagnostics tools for checking thresholds, sending alerts or trending. CMX uses shared-memory to ensure non-blocking read/update actions, which is an important requirement for real-time processes. This paper introduces the topic of monitoring C/C++ applications and presents CMX as a building block to achieve this goal.

Poster THPPC014 [0.795 MB]

Paper	Title	Page
TUPPC025	Advantages and Challenges to the Use of On-line Feedback in CERN’s Accelerators Controls Configuration Management	600
	Z. Zaharieva, S. Jensen, J. Rolland Lopez De Coca, A. Romero Marin CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	The Controls Configuration Service (CCS) provides the Configuration Management facilities for the Controls System for all CERN accelerators. It complies with Configuration Management standards, tracking the life of configuration items and their relationships by allowing identification and triggering change management processes. Data stored in the CCS is extracted and propagated to the controls hardware for remote configuration. The article will present the ability of the CCS to audit items and verify conformance to specification with the implementation of on-line feedback focusing on Front-End Computers (FEC) configurations. Long-standing problems existed in this area such as discrepancies between the actual state of the FEC and the configuration sent to it at reboot. This resulted in difficult-to-diagnose behaviour and disturbance for the Operations team. The article will discuss the solution architecture (tailored processes and tools), the development and implementation challenges, as well as the advantages of this approach and the benefits to the user groups – from equipment specialists and controls systems experts to the operators in the Accelerators Controls Centre.
	Poster TUPPC025 [3.937 MB]

THPPC014	CMX - A Generic Solution to Expose Monitoring Metrics in C and C++ Applications	1118
	F. Ehm, Y. Fischer, G.M. Gorgogianni, S. Jensen, P. Jurcso CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	CERN’s Accelerator Control System is built upon a large number of C, C++ and Java services that are required for daily operation of the accelerator complex. The knowledge of the internal state of these processes is essential for problem diagnostic as well as for constant monitoring for pre-failure recognition. The CMX library follows similar principles as JMX (Java Management Extensions) and provides similar monitoring capabilities for C and C++ applications. It allows registering and exposing runtime information as simple counters, floating point numbers or character data. This can be subsequently used by external diagnostics tools for checking thresholds, sending alerts or trending. CMX uses shared-memory to ensure non-blocking read/update actions, which is an important requirement for real-time processes. This paper introduces the topic of monitoring C/C++ applications and presents CMX as a building block to achieve this goal.
	Poster THPPC014 [0.795 MB]