European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Quadruples Data Storage Capacity and Reduces Costs with New Tape Storage Solution
 
 

European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Quadruples Data Storage Capacity and Reduces Costs with New Tape Storage Solution

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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.

CERN needed to cost-effectively store several petabytes of new data each year from its experiments without drastically increasing its storage investment. Oracle’s StorageTek T10000C tape drive offered a cost-effective solution for storing and managing CERN’s rapidly growing data.

Furthermore, StorageTek T10000C’s Maximum Capacity feature enables CERN to store up to 10% more data on each tape cartridge, providing direct media storage savings and a total capacity of up to 5.5 terabyte per tape cartridge.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)

  • "With Oracle’s StorageTek T10000C tape drives, we increased capacity of our existing tape drives by a factor of five, allowing us to maintain our existing library footprint in spite of exponential data growth.” – Vladimir Bahyl, Technology and Storage Infrastructure Service Manager, Information Technology Department, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)

  • Enable CERN to cost-effectively store up to 30 petabytes of new research data annually, including data generated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and other physics experiments
  • Keep more than 70 petabytes of historical, archived research data available for rapid retrieval and analysis in the short term and for decades to come
  • Minimize the data archive’s physical footprint within the current configuration to use the existing infrastructure as efficiently as possible, while continuing to handle the rapidly growing amount of data
  • Use tape drives and cartridges to maximum capacity to optimize value to investment ratio

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Built a cost-effective tape storage infrastructure to record and retrieve LHC data—which includes more than 70 petabytes of data and is growing at a rate of up to 30 petabytes per year—with Oracle’s StorageTek T10000C tape drives, StorageTek T10000B tape drives, StorageTek SL8500 modular library systems, and StorageTek T10000 T2 media
  • Installed 40 StorageTekT10000C tape drives and increased data storage capacity for LHC research data by a factor of five, without investment in additional tape libraries
  • Doubled the transfer speed of research data to the storage environment
  • Reduced by a one-third the number of tape drives required for research data storage, even as storage requirements increase
  • Activated the StorageTek Maximum Capacity feature on the StorageTek T10000C tape drives, enabling CERN to store up to 10% more LHC research data on each tape cartridge and providing direct 10% media storage savings

Why Oracle

CERN is a long-standing user of StorageTek products, and the organization periodically collaborates with Oracle and participates in beta testing of its new tape-related products―both new, higher-capacity tape drives and complementary software. To solve CERN’s storage challenges, Oracle offered a cost-effective, enterprise-class solution to store and manage petabytes of data.

“Oracle listened to us and included some of the features we requested in its new StorageTek T10000C tape drives, specifically the StorageTek Maximum Capacity functionality. It enables us to store up to 10% more data on each tape cartridge, thereby providing direct media cost savings,” said Vladimir Bahyl, technology and storage infrastructure service manager, information technology department, CERN.

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