175HIGHLIGHTS 2020

J. Leonardon, C. Maccarrone, A. Meunier and H. Pedroso-Marques. ESRF

SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS FOR DEALING WITH THE COVID-19 SITUATION

The COVID-19 crisis has been the cause of various challenges in 2020, not only related to public health but also affecting organisation and management in the workplace. The need for more advanced technical solutions has been triggered by the necessary social distancing imposed for containing the spread of the virus. This has affected all ESRF-related communities, including staff, the scientific community, ESRF users and administration.

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device sections. Average pressure was, and still is, dominated by straight sections equipped with ID5000 NEG-coated chambers, which have to cope with more than 1 kW of impinging radiation power without the help of pumps. Good vacuum is not only a matter of low pressure: residual gas species are important too. Interactions between the beam and gas molecules with heavier masses produce higher losses. For this reason, many residual gas analysers (RGA) are installed along the ring and continuously monitor the vacuum quality. Without beam, pressure is dominated by H2. Other gases are present, such as CO (around 10%), CO2 and CH4 (a few percent). With beam, the contribution of other gases increases due to PSD. Figure 150 shows

the conditioning curves for the main gases. The increasing trend for other gases before 10 A.h is due to the gradual current ramp-up and vacuum corrective interventions. After stabilisation of operation parameters, the conditioning effect becomes visible and H2 becomes increasingly dominant: a sign of good vacuum quality.

The only vacuum-related limit to EBS performances today is due to the mechanical weakness of ceramic kicker chambers. For this reason, beam current in timing modes is limited to prevent cracks and vacuum leaks. A specific project to redesign these chambers has already started, with the goal to install them by the winter 2021 shutdown.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the collaborative way of working within the ESRF facility and, as with the vast majority of companies, the ESRF did not possess the resources and solutions for dealing with this unprecedented situation. This article describes the main concerns encountered and gives an overview of the technical solutions set up to adapt the ESRF to new ways of working in the circumstances faced.

Zoom

When the lockdown became an option in France and the possibility of teleworking was considered, it quickly became necessary to deploy a visio-conference solution that could be available to all staff regardless of their work location. A survey of available products steered us in the direction of the Zoom application, with the choice of either paid licences for those having regular meetings with several attendees or free licences when shorter meetings of 40 minutes or less were sufficient. The security concerns raised in April 2020 were quickly resolved by June but highlighted the increasing cybersecurity concerns when extending the ESRF s IT infrastructure beyond the campus boundaries.

For a meeting that is to be held between a specific location (for example, the ESRF Control Room) and off-site counterparts, the Computing Services Windows unit have installed the Zoom Room solution. Such a solution will also be installed on the beamlines as soon as the necessary appliances are available. For larger

Fig. 151: Number of remote connections at the end of September with geographic distribution.