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| Paper: |
ASTRI Virtual Test Bed: from Prototype to Mini-Array |
| Volume: |
532, ASTRONOMICAL DATA ANALYSIS SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS XXX |
| Page: |
39 |
| Authors: |
Gianotti, F.; Conforti, V.; Tacchini, A.; Bulgarelli, A.; Bruno, P.; Calanducci, A.; Costa, A.; Gallozzi, S.; Lombardi, S.; Lucarelli, F.; Parmiggiani, N.; Russo1, F.; Scuderi, S.; Trifoglio, M. |
| Abstract: |
The ASTRI ("Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana") program is a collaborative international effort led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) that has designed and built an end-to-end prototype Cherenkov Telescope in a dual-mirror configuration. This prototype is of the same class as the Small-Sized Telescopes (SSTs) planned for the future Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). The prototype, named ASTRI-Horn d'Arturo, is currently in operation at the INAF observing station "G. Fracastoro", located in Serra La Nave on Mt.Etna (Italy). The ASTRI project is developing a mini-array of nine ASTRI telescopes to be installed at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands.
In order to support the operations of the ASTRI Prototype and Mini-Array, a specific and sophisticated software is necessary. This software should be designed and developed following modern software engineering practices, i.e. going through the steps of: plan, development, test and release. A dedicated Test Bed is essential to support the verification activities in both unit and integration tests. In this paper we show how the ASTRI Prototype Test Bed has been organized and how the virtual system that hosts it was built. We also present the hardware system architecture and its components to explain how this is used to create a virtualization system, in accordance with the Test Bed's requirements. Experience with the Prototype Test Bed has been exploited as lesson learned to optimize the design of the virtualization system that will host the ASTRI Mini-Array Test Bed. For the design of this system we started from the study of a different Open Source virtualization software: ProxMox. This software solves many of the problems we had with the previous system adopted and offers new and indispensable features. The decision to use the ProxMox software has a major impact on hardware architecture. This kind of architecture can be realized in a very simple and economical way, in fact, the entire system can be built using four hypervisors and two network switches, eliminating the need for the system control server and the expensive Storage Area Network, yet still satisfying the performance, redundancy, and reliability requirements. |
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