The DIRAC project was initially developed for the LHCb Collaboration as a system for massive production of the simulation data in order to design and optimize the LHCb experimental setup. Later on, it was extended for experimental data processing and for the final data analysis by the LHCb users in the grid environment. In its current state, the DIRAC project is a general-purpose framework for building distributed systems providing access to different kinds of computing resources.

In the context of the EELA2 project, DIRAC was proposed as a tool to facilitate the access of EELA-2 applications (from any scientific domain) to the Grid. Currently, since a large number of EELA-2 applications are using MPI to handle their parallel computations, DIRAC was extended to support the MPI functionality. Indeed, DIRAC can be used as an alternative to overcome an infrastructure limitation of not having many CEs able to support MPICH2 jobs.

In addition, a web interface allows users to easily interact with DIRAC in a secure way, using a desktop-like application without extra software installation.

In summary, DIRAC can be used to:

• Run normal and MPICH2 jobs
• Manage data into the Grid
• Interact using DIRAC Web Portal

For more information please refer to: http://mareela.in2p3.fr:9200/dirac/wiki/DIRAC3

See also:

• DIRAC Client - installation guide: http://mareela.in2p3.fr:9200/dirac/wiki/DIRAC3/DiracClientInstallation
• Tsaregorodtsev, A., Hamar, V. DIRAC experience on EELA-2. In: 2nd EELA-2 Conference, Choroní (Venezuela), Procedings of The Second EELA-2 Conference ISBN 978-84-7834-627-1, p.27-32, 2009.
• DIRAC presentation - 2nd EELA-2 Grid School, Queretaro, Mexico, 30/09/2009.