Run Control and Monitor System for the CMS Experiment

The Run Control and Monitor System (RCMS) of the CMS experiment is the set of hardware and software components responsible for controlling and monitoring the experiment during data-taking. It provides users with a "virtual counting room", enabling them to operate the experiment and to monitor detector status and data quality from any point in the world. This paper describes the architecture of the RCMS with particular emphasis on its scalability through a distributed collection of nodes arranged in a tree-based hierarchy. The current implementation of the architecture in a prototype RCMS used in test beam setups, detector validations and DAQ demonstrators is documented. A discussion of the key technologies used, including Web Services, and the results of tests performed with a 128-node system are presented.