Business issues
Protecting Data Over 2,000 employees operating on a $300M+ annual budget collaborate to support 2,500 of the world’s top physics research scientists. These science gurus review and analyze colossal amounts of data generated by Fermilab’s research projects. Currently, the digitized secrets to the universe occupy 1.2 petabytes (PBs) of capacity on tape—with an additional one PB added annually. Fermilab hosts the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Tevatron, whose experiments can generate data volumes as high as 15 terabytes (TBs) in a single day. Naturally, with experiments churning out data in volumes expressed with many zeros, and with the need to move that data to researchers for analysis, Fermilab’s storage requirements are a cut above those found in most data centers.

Solutions
To meet its expansive data storage needs Fermilab deployed five StorageTek PowderHorn 9310 automated cartridge systems with over 20,000 slots. These are populated with over 70 StorageTek 9940A and 9940B tape drives. The current single copy StorageTek aggregate archive capacity is 1 - 2 PBs with potential capacity at about 5 PBs. Fermilab is using StorageTek’s ACSLS Manager software application to manage the libraries in conjunction with its own proprietary archive application called Enstore, which saves and distributes the lab’s accelerator and research data.

Business benefits
Protect capital investments in legacy cartridge media (boosted capacity by 233 percent overall). Deployed highly reliable media to protect single-copy research data. Utilize high-capacity transfer rates to move 23 TBs of data daily.