Installing and configuring application software on the LHC computing grid

The management of application software is major scientific and practical challenge for designers of large-scale production grids, the large hadron collider computing grid is unique in the sense that coupling between application scientists and the resource providers is extremely loose, thus adding even more complexity to the software management problem. After an analysis of the requirements for a grid software management service from users' and site administrators' perspective, we give an overview of the solution adopted by the LHC grid infrastructure to support high energy physics experiments, highlighting features and current limitations. Tank&Spark is our server-client solution that extends the LHC grid application software system and tackles some of its limitations. Tank&Spark can be used as a stand-alone service also in other grid infrastructures. Here we illustrate the design, deployment and preliminary results obtained