Exploring remote operation for ALMA Observatory

Tzu-Chiang Shen; Ruben Soto; Nicolás Ovando; Gaston Velez; Soledad Fuica; Anton Schemrl; Andres Robles; Jorge Ibsen; Giorgio Filippi; Emmanuel Pietriga

doi:10.1117/12.2054860

6 August 2014 Exploring remote operation for ALMA Observatory

Tzu-Chiang Shen, Ruben Soto, Nicolás Ovando, Gaston Velez, Soledad Fuica, Anton Schemrl, Andres Robles, Jorge Ibsen, Giorgio Filippi, Emmanuel Pietriga

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9149, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems V; 91492D (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2054860
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2014, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

The Atacama Large Millimeter /submillimeter Array (ALMA) will be a unique research instrument composed of at least 66 reconfigurable high-precision antennas, located at the Chajnantor plain in the Chilean Andes at an elevation of 5000 m. The observatory has another office located in Santiago of Chile, 1600 km from the Chajnantor plain. In the Atacama desert, the wonderful observing conditions imply precarious living conditions and extremely high operation costs: i.e: flight tickets, hospitality, infrastructure, water, electricity, etc. It is clear that a purely remote operational model is impossible, but we believe that a mixture of remote and local operation scheme would be beneficial to the observatory, not only in reducing the cost but also in increasing the observatory overall efficiency. This paper describes the challenges and experience gained in such experimental proof of the concept. The experiment was performed over the existing 100 Mbps bandwidth, which connects both sites through a third party telecommunication infrastructure. During the experiment, all of the existent capacities of the observing software were validated successfully, although room for improvement was clearly detected. Network virtualization, MPLS configuration, L2TPv3 tunneling, NFS adjustment, operational workstations design are part of the experiment.

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Tzu-Chiang Shen, Ruben Soto, Nicolás Ovando, Gaston Velez, Soledad Fuica, Anton Schemrl, Andres Robles, Jorge Ibsen, Giorgio Filippi, and Emmanuel Pietriga "Exploring remote operation for ALMA Observatory", Proc. SPIE 9149, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems V, 91492D (6 August 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2054860

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