Science and Technology Facilities Council

Leading U.K. Research Organization Harnesses High-Energy Physics Data with Sun Storage Technology

Formed by Royal Charter in 2007 (by combining CCLRC and PPARC), the Science and Technology Facilities Council is one of Europe's largest multidisciplinary research organizations supporting scientists and engineers worldwide. The Council operates world-class, large-scale research facilities and provides strategic advice to the United Kingdom (U.K.) government on their development. It also manages international research projects in support of a broad cross-section of the U.K. research community.

Customer Challenges

Store and manage large volumes of research data, securely and reliably
Provide rapid data access to research organizations worldwide
Optimize storage utilization
Control operational costs
Establish scalable infrastructure for cost-effective growth

Solution

The Science and Technology Facilities Council deployed a new Sun StorageTek tape library and high-performance tape drives to reliably meet the data access and management requirements of its most demanding customers in the global high-energy physics research community.

Business Results

Improved throughput to directly support data-intensive physics experiments
Optimized space and costs by increasing capacity with fewer drives and cartridges
Enhanced reliability to support high duty cycle requirements

Products and Services

Story Details

Storage requirements are especially intensive in high-energy physics, with atom-smashing supercolliders generating petabytes of data. The multidisciplinary research program at the U.K.-based Science and Technology Facilities Council includes data storage and management services that support of some of the world's largest high-energy physics experiments.

In 2005, the Council recognized the need to increase the capacity and throughput of its data storage services. One of the main drivers for the upgrade was the launch of the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator at CERN, the Swiss-based European Center for Nuclear Research. The Council knew that it needed more capable tape storage technology to support the demanding Hadron environment, which is expected to eventually generate five petabytes of data per year. Toward that goal, the Council put out a tender offer and evaluated several potential vendors to replace its older Sun StorageTek PowderHorn tape library.

" Sun provided us with the enterprise-class storage we need to support some of the world's largest high-energy physics experiments on a 24x7 basis, delivering data non-stop at 250 megabytes per second. "

— David R. Corney, Division Head of Data Services, Science and Technology Facilities Council

The Council and CERN had long-standing and positive relationships with Sun/StorageTek, which made Sun a leading candidate for the upgrade project. After also weighing the technical capabilities of the competing solutions, the Council chose to deploy a Sun StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System with 10 Sun StorageTek T10000 tape drives and 6,000 Sun StorageTek T10000 data cartridges. Sun consultants assisted with the implementation of the new systems. A SunSpectrum service plan is in place to provide support for the solution.

The Sun solution provides the breakthrough performance needed by the Council to offload large volumes of data and make it immediately available to research applications. In preliminary experiments, the T10000 tape drives have shown their ability to meet LHC throughput requirements of 250 megabytes per second and sustain data transmission bandwidths of 2 gigabytes per second between the Council and CERN.

The Council also saw the opportunity to reduce costs with the Sun solution because it stores more data with fewer tape drives and fewer cartridges, is easy to service without taking it offline, and is designed for reliable, continuous operation in high duty cycle environments. In addition, the Sun solution allows the Council to avoid media costs and preserve data by moving Sun StorageTek T9940B tape drives from its PowderHorn system into the SL8500 tape library. The solution now totals about 3 petabytes of storage, 13 T10000 tape drives and 10,000 Sun StorageTek data cartridges.

The Sun solution gives the Council almost unlimited scalability and allows the research organization to expand its storage capacity in cost-effective increments. Each of the T10000 drives holds up to 500 gigabytes of uncompressed data and the modular SL8500 will be able to scale to more than 2,000 drives and 300,000 slots in the future.

The Council plans to eventually upgrade all 10,000 of its tape drive slots to the T10000 drives, which would expand the current capacity to five petabytes. The Council will also be able to reuse its T10000 cartridges with future-generation Sun tape drives offering even greater data density and capacity. No matter how ambitious the future experiments conducted at CERN or other research centers, the Council is positioned to provide the needed storage services.