First year of ALMA site software deployment: where everything comes together

Víctor González; Matias Mora; Rodrigo Araya; Diego Arredondo; Marcelo Bartsch; Pablo Burgos; Jorge Ibsen; Johnny Reveco; Norman Sáez; Anton Schemrl; Jorge Sepulveda; Tzu-Chiang Shen; Rubén Soto; Nicolás Troncoso; Mauricio Zambrano; Nicolás Barriga; Brian Glendenning; Gianni Raffi; Jeff Kern

doi:10.1117/12.857856

29 July 2010 First year of ALMA site software deployment: where everything comes together

Víctor González, Matias Mora, Rodrigo Araya, Diego Arredondo, Marcelo Bartsch, Pablo Burgos, Jorge Ibsen, Johnny Reveco, Norman Sáez, Anton Schemrl, Jorge Sepulveda, Tzu-Chiang Shen, Rubén Soto, Nicolás Troncoso, Mauricio Zambrano, Nicolás Barriga, Brian Glendenning, Gianni Raffi, Jeff Kern

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7737, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems III; 77371Z (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857856
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Starting 2009, the ALMA project initiated one of its most exciting phases within construction: the first antenna from one of the vendors was delivered to the Assembly, Integration and Verification team. With this milestone and the closure of the ALMA Test Facility in New Mexico, the JAO Computing Group in Chile found itself in the front line of the project's software deployment and integration effort. Among the group's main responsibilities are the deployment, configuration and support of the observation systems, in addition to infrastructure administration, all of which needs to be done in close coordination with the development groups in Europe, North America and Japan. Software support has been the primary interaction key with the current users (mainly scientists, operators and hardware engineers), as the software is normally the most visible part of the system. During this first year of work with the production hardware, three consecutive software releases have been deployed and commissioned. Also, the first three antennas have been moved to the Array Operations Site, at 5.000 meters elevation, and the complete end-to-end system has been successfully tested. This paper shares the experience of this 15-people group as part of the construction team at the ALMA site, and working together with Computing IPT, on the achievements and problems overcomed during this period. It explores the excellent results of teamwork, and also some of the troubles that such a complex and geographically distributed project can run into. Finally, it approaches the challenges still to come, with the transition to the ALMA operations plan.

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Víctor González, Matias Mora, Rodrigo Araya, Diego Arredondo, Marcelo Bartsch, Pablo Burgos, Jorge Ibsen, Johnny Reveco, Norman Sáez, Anton Schemrl, Jorge Sepulveda, Tzu-Chiang Shen, Rubén Soto, Nicolás Troncoso, Mauricio Zambrano, Nicolás Barriga, Brian Glendenning, Gianni Raffi, and Jeff Kern "First year of ALMA site software deployment: where everything comes together", Proc. SPIE 7737, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems III, 77371Z (29 July 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857856

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