Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Proactively Monitors Its IT Infrastructure to Support Services Critical to the Large Hadron Collider and Its Experiments
 
 

Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Proactively Monitors Its IT Infrastructure to Support Services Critical to the Large Hadron Collider and Its Experiments

Printer View Printer View

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is one of the world’s largest and most respected centers for scientific research. Founded in 1954 and located near Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border, CERN was one of Europe’s first joint ventures. Today, it has 20 member states. The organization uses the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments to study fundamental particles and the origin of the universe.

CERN has a 30-year relationship with Oracle and makes extensive use of Oracle software and hardware technologies to support mission-critical applications for most administrative and technical activities within the organization.

Experiencing enormous increases in data volume, CERN looked to optimize its existing infrastructure to best support its scientific research and keep IT costs down. It deployed Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g to proactively monitor all components within its Oracle infrastructure― from hardware to applications―and maximizes availability for scientific research.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)

  • “Oracle Enterprise Manager monitors the components within our Oracle infrastructure, alerting us to any issues before they become a problem, enabling us to focus on scientific research, and helping us keep IT costs down.” – Anton Topurov, Monitoring Service Manager, IT Department, CERN

  • Ensure reliable and optimized access to data, including the more than 20 petabytes of data generated annually by CERN’s four big-particle detectors
  • Provide an environment with minimized Oracle Database downtime to maximize activity of the particle detectors and the organization’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
  • Control and optimize the management costs associated with CERN’s growing number of Oracle databases and middleware services
  • Deploy an environment that enables CERN to monitor various custom applications

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g to monitor physical hardware and software assets as well as the quality and availability of the associated services that rely on those assets for various scientific projects
  • Supported proactive monitoring of the Oracle environment to maximize availability of the IT infrastructure required for research
  • Ensured efficient monitoring of the Oracle environment, a key component of the infrastructure for the capture, storage, and processing of the vast data quantities―more than 20 petabytes―generated annually by CERN’s LHC
  • Simplified monitoring of more than 1,500 targets, including more than 200 databases and 50 cluster targets alone, plus Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g components
  • Improved efficiency by grouping databases, hosts, listeners, and application servers together so they can be monitored as a unit, enabling CERN to manage the performance and availability of complete business services rather than individual IT components
  • Automated configuration management tasks, such as ensuring database back-ups are up to date, to reduce administrative effort
  • Optimized performance management and tuning of CERN's databases, ensuring a high-performance environment for the organization’s challenging and extremely demanding research projects
  • Gained the scalability and flexibility required to manage the growing Oracle infrastructure without having to proportionally increase the number of administrators
  • Implemented a control environment with Oracle Enterprise that will play an important role in monitoring CERN’s custom applications, such as its research project budget system

Resources