Toshiba Electronics y Promise Technology They have been data storage providers generated by the CERN particle accelerator. This is a huge amount of information, estimated at more than 1 TB of data per minute, that comes out of the entity’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), throughout the day, since the LHC’s collision detectors They work continuously.
This means that CERN needs to have a storage system for the information produced by the particle accelerator that is solid and reliable. To do this, use Toshiba’s high-capacity business hard drives. Specifically, the units that CERN uses for this start at 4TB and go up to 18TB for the MG09 series disks.
In addition, Toshiba and Promise have been in charge during their collaboration with CERN of developing the scaling of the storage capacity of its main data centers. From these facilities, the entity forwards the information it produces to more than 170 research centers around the world, so that they can analyze it.
Currently, the system has a storage capacity that exceeds one exabyte, spread across more than 120,000 hard drives housed in more than 4,000 JBOD cabinets. Looking ahead, both companies are developing solutions to avoid disruptions to LHC research work.
Thus, Promise Technology has developed a 60-bay JBOD model, the VTrak J5960, with Greenboost energy-saving technology. Toshiba has already completed the first system tests with its 20 TB MG10 drives in the hard drive applications laboratory, and has confirmed good performance in terms of data, cooling and energy efficiency.
Eric Bonfillou, Deputy Head of the IT Fabric Group at CERNhas highlighted that “In our quest to unravel the mysteries of the universe, we need partners who understand the importance of data storage, reliability and efficiency with solutions tailored to our unique needs.”
According to Alice Chang, directora de Marketing de Promise Technology, “The energy crisis is currently a real challenge for all companies, including CERN. The Vtrak J5960 provides a comprehensive solution to solve this dilemma and we are confident that Toshiba’s enterprise capacity hard drives, installed and operated in this JBOD, will support future growth needs.”
For its part, Rainer W. Kaesem, Senior Director of Business Development, Toshiba Storage Products Divisionhas stressed that the company is “very proud to support CERN activities with our enterprise capacity hard drives”. Furthermore, he recalled that at Toshiba they continue “developing larger capacities up to 30TB and beyond, given that hard drives are and will continue to be essential to cost-effectively and energy-efficiently store the Exabytes of data generated by CERN and the entire world.”
