Overview of the CDF Run II data handling system

Abstract

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) collaboration records and analyses proton–anti-proton interactions with a center-of-mass energy of 2 TeV at the Tevatron. During the next collider run the experiment expects to record about 1 PetaByte of data, an increase by more than an order of magnitude in data volume compared to the existing data of the experiment. This paper gives an overview of the new data handling system. The design builds upon successful strategies used in the past but eliminates shortcomings encountered with the old system. The core of the central analysis system will be a pool of over 20 TBytes of data disks. Logically behind this disk pool will be an automated tape library with a storage capacity to hold the full 1 PByte of Run II data. Multi-processor compute systems will be located around this storage pool to provide the required analysis power of over 3000 SPECint95. Desktop systems will be integrated into the analysis system via a shared login area and user authentication. The data handling software falls into four categories: software to manage computing resources, software for the data disks and for the mass storage subsystem, software to organize and manage the meta-data information, and the I/O modules in the analysis framework for accessing data.