Abstract

The ALMA Common Software (ACS) framework provides Bulk Data Transfer (BDT) service implementations that need to be updated for new projects that will use ACS, such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) and other projects, with most cases having quite different requirements than ALMA. We propose a new open-source BDT service for ACS based on ZeroMQ, that meets CTA data transfer specifications while maintaining retro-compatibility with the closed-source solution used in ALMA. The service uses the push-pull pattern for data transfer, the publisher-subscriber pattern for data control, and Protocol Buffers for data serialization, having also the option to integrate other serialization options easily. Besides complying with ACS interface definition to be used by ACS components and clients, the service provide an independent API to be used outside the ACS framework. Our experiments show a good compromise between throughput and computational effort, suggesting that the service could scale up in terms of number of producers, number of consumers and network bandwidth.