Configuration monitoring tool for large-scale distributed computing

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will likely use a grid system to achieve much of its offline processing need. Given the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of grid systems, it is desirable to have in place a configuration monitor. The configuration monitoring tool is built using the Globus toolkit and web services. It consists of an information provider for the Globus MDS, a relational database for keeping track of the current and old configurations, and client interfaces to query and administer the configuration system. The Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI), together with EDG Java Security packages, are used for secure authentication and transparent access to the configuration information across the CMS grid. This work has been prototyped and tested using US-CMS grid resources.