Abstract
The IT Storage group at CERN develops the software responsible for archiving to tape the custodial copy of the physics data generated by the LHC experiments. Physics run 3 will start in 2021 and will introduce two major challenges for which the tape archive software must be evolved. Firstly the software will need to make more efficient use of tape drives in order to sustain the predicted data rate of 150 petabytes per year as opposed to the current 50 petabytes per year. Secondly the software will need to be seamlessly integrated with EOS, which has become the de facto disk storage system provided by the IT Storage group for physics data.The tape storage software for LHC physics run 3 is code named CTA (the CERN Tape Archive). This paper describes how CTA will introduce a pre-emptive drive scheduler to use tape drives more efficiently, will encapsulate all tape software into a single module that will sit behind one or more EOS systems, and will be simpler by dropping support for obsolete backwards compatibility.
Highlights
The IT Storage group (IT-ST) at CERN is currently designing and developing the CERN Tape Archive (CTA) storage system
The software will need to be seamlessly integrated with EOS, which has become the de facto disk storage system provided by the IT Storage group for physics data
This paper describes how CTA will introduce a pre-emptive drive scheduler to use tape drives more efficiently, will encapsulate all tape software into a single module that will sit behind one or more EOS systems, and will be simpler by dropping support for obsolete backwards compatibility
Summary
The IT Storage group (IT-ST) at CERN is currently designing and developing the CERN Tape Archive (CTA) storage system. CTA is the natural evolution of the CERN Advanced STORage manager (CASTOR[1]) with which the IT-ST group have had many years of operational and development experience [2]. EOS combined with CTA will eventually replace CASTOR which is the current system used to archive physics data to tape. In 2016, LHC physics run 2 archived over 50 petabytes of physics data to tape using CASTOR. The data rates of LHC physics run 2 will increase up to 100 petabytes per year during 2017 and 2018. LHC physics run 3 will start in 2021 and is predicted to store over 150 petabytes per year. Run 3 will use EOS and CTA as opposed to CASTOR to archive data to tape.
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