The commissioning of CMS sites: Improving the site reliability

The computing system of the CMS experiment works using distributed resources from more than 60 computing centres worldwide. These centres, located in Europe, America and Asia are interconnected by the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. The operation of the system requires a stable and reliable behaviour of the underlying infrastructure. CMS has established a procedure to extensively test all relevant aspects of a Grid site, such as the ability to efficiently use their network to transfer data, the functionality of all the site services relevant for CMS and the capability to sustain the various CMS computing workflows at the required scale. This contribution describes in detail the procedure to rate CMS sites depending on their performance, including the complete automation of the program, the description of monitoring tools, and its impact in improving the overall reliability of the Grid from the point of view of the CMS computing system.