1. Accounting System

The Accounting system is responsible to collect and store data regarding to the activities: data transfers, pilot jobs. It is designed for store historical data by creating time buckets. The data stored with properties, which are used to classify the records: user, site and also properties which can be measured: memory, CPU.

The data can be accessible through the DIRAC web framework using the Accounting application. The records are stored in the AccountingDB, in “two” different formats:

  • raw records

  • time buckets: this is displayed to the users

The system consists of the following accounting types:
  • Job: for creating reports of the activity on the computing resources such as Grid, Cloud, etc.

  • Pilot: for creating reports for pilot jobs running on different computing elements such as ARC CE, CREAM, VAC, etc.

  • Data operation: for creating reports about data activities: transfers, replication, removal, etc.

  • WMS History: This it used for monitoring the DIRAC Workload Management system. This type is replaced by the WMS monitoring which is part of the Monitoring system. It is replaced, because the WMS History type is for real time monitoring and MySQL is not for storing time series with high resolution.

1.1. AccountingDB

It is based on MySQL. It stores the raw records and the time buckets and provides the functionalities for creating the accounting reports. According to the computing activities (for example running jobs) and the size of the DIRAC system the size of the db can be small: a single MySQL server or it can be a multiple instance. The system can allow to store the accounting types in different database instances using Multi-DB accounting.

1.2. Multi-DB accounting

Accounting types can be stored in a different DB. By default all accounting types data will be stored in the database defined under /Systems/Accounting/_Instance_/Databases/AccountingDB. To store a type data in a different database (say WMSHistory) define the data base location under the databases directory. Then define /Systems/Accounting/_Instance_/Databases/MultiDB and set an option with the type name and value pointing to the database to use. For instance:

Systems
{
  Accounting
  {
    Development
    {
      AccountingDB
      {
        Host = localhost
        User = dirac
        Password = dirac
        DBName = accounting
      }
      Acc2
      {
        Host = somewhere.internet.net
        User = dirac
        Password = dirac
        DBName = infernus
      }
      MultiDB
      {
        WMSHistory = Acc2
      }
    }
  }
}

With the previous configuration all accounting data will be stored and retrieved from the usual database except for the _WMSHistory_ type that will be stored and retrieved from the _Acc2_ database.

1.3. DataStore Helpers

From DIRAC v6r17p14 there is the possibility to run multiple ‘DataStore’ services, where one needs to be called ‘DataStoreMaster’, while all the others may be called anything else. The master will create the proper buckets and the helpers only insert the records to the ‘in’ table. For example:

install service Accounting DataStoreHelper -m DataStore -p RunBucketing=False -p Port=9166

In the CS you have to define DataStoreMaster. For example:

URLs
{
  DataStore = dips://lbvobox105.cern.ch:9133/Accounting/DataStore
  DataStore += dips://lbvobox105.cern.ch:9166/Accounting/DataStoreHelper
  DataStore += dips://lbvobox102.cern.ch:9166/Accounting/DataStoreHelper
  ReportGenerator = dips://lbvobox106.cern.ch:9134/Accounting/ReportGenerator
  DataStoreHelper = dips://lbvobox105.cern.ch:9166/Accounting/DataStoreHelper
  DataStoreHelper += dips://lbvobox102.cern.ch:9166/Accounting/DataStoreHelper
  DataStoreMaster = dips://lbvobox105.cern.ch:9133/Accounting/DataStore
}

1.4. Report generator

It is used for creating the accounting reports. Note: the report generator is caching the plots using the local file system. It is very important for running a service in a hardware which are having very good disk.

1.5. Installation

In order to use the system, it requires to install the following components: AccountingDB, DataStore, ReportGenerator, for the WMSMonitoring the StatesAccountingAgent. The simplest is by using the SystemAdministrator CLI:

install db AccountingDB
install service Accounting DataStore
install service Accounting ReportGenerator
install agent WorkloadManagement StatesAccountingAgent

1.6. Accounting user interface

The Accounting web application can be used for creating the reports. If you do not have WebAppDIRAC, please install it following Installing WebAppDIRAC instructions.