Explore cloud solutions for ATLAS with $250,000 AWS cloud credits

Abstract Maintaining the huge grid computing facilities for LHC experiments and replacing their hardware every few years has been very expensive. The California State University (CSU) ATLAS group recently received $250,000 AWS cloud credit from the CSU Chancellor’s Office to build the first virtual US ATLAS Tier 3 to explore cloud solutions for ATLAS. We will use this award to set up full ATLAS computing environments on the cloud for ATLAS physics analysis frame works, MC generation, simulation and production. We will also develop policies for ATLAS members to submit jobs to the cloud and develop an economic model focused especially on the cost effectiveness of cloud solutions for ATLAS through extensive real user experience. The results will help ATLAS computing and physics communities decide future directions with incoming LHC upgrades.