CERN Accelerating science

Getting Started

How would you like to use WLCG?

New User and want to access the LHC computing grid

You need to be registered with a LHC-recognised VO (Virtual Organisation) before you can begin using the WLCG.

See the WLCG User Guide for instructions on how to set up and get started.

Users interested in other VOs, please search for your VO on the EGI Operations portal or on the OSG Registration database. If you can't find your VO, please open a GGUS ticket.

Site/System Administrator

Europe & Asia: contact your local NGI within EGI

USA: see OpenScienceGrid

In all cases:

 

Set-up and Register new Site(s) in an existing Federation

The WLCG service is available to all members of the LHC experiment collaborations. 

How to join?

Europe/Africa/Asia: see EGI.

Americas: see OSG (and here for WLCG/OSG accounting details)

For general support problems, there is  the GGUS user support portal where documentation, FAQs, and helpdesk facilities are available.

To register your site with WLCG

Any requests to be part of a WLCG Federation need to be explicitly sanctioned by the Federation Manager. This is because your site's contribution need to be taken into account when calculating the resource commitment per Federation each year.

First, verify that your institute has been covered by a Memorandum of Understanding with WLCG. To do this, contact the Federation Manager of the relevant country - see the Collaboration Board contacts to locate the Federation contact. This person will then be able to advise you which Federation you can be part of.

Next contact LCG Office (either an e-mail from you with the Federation Manager in copy, or an e-mail from the Federation Manager directly) with the following information about the new site(s) you wish to register:

  1. The Federation you are part of eg. "Brazil, SPRACE, São Paulo"
  2. The Accounting Name eg. "BR-SP-SPRACE"
  3. The site name(s) - eg "SPRACE"

We will then arrange to include you in the monitoring tools, accounting and reliability/availability reports.

If your desired federation is not listed in REBUS, then this means your institute/country has not signed a Memorandum of Understanding with WLCG. Please contact the LCG Office to discuss and please also refer to the section Memorandum of Understanding for more details.

Set-up and Register new Site(s) in a new Federation

If you wish to register a new Federation, then your institute/national funding agency will be required to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with WLCG, to set up the framework of agreements regarding resources and services you will provide.

Please see Memorandum of Understanding for more details.

Student/School wanting to be part of a WLCG project

The WLCG project is concerned with coordinating the efforts of large scientific computing centres and large university departments that have significant investments in computing and networking.

However schools and students can also get involved in some way.

If you wish to work on a project contributing to WLCG, you should contact a local university physics department that has some participation in the LHC physics program and discuss potential projects with them. Have a look at our REBUS Topology to see which institutes are taking part.

If you are based in the USA, there may be a local university that works with the Open Science Grid that can help you.

Contribute home computer resources

If you are an individual wishing to contribute your home computer resources, you can become involved in the LHC@home 2.0 project as part of the volunteer computing program.