Research Data Facility (RDF) Expansion

We can now confirm the details of the Research Data Facility (RDF) upgrade which is due to take place during the end of February and beginning of March.

Technical Details

The RDF consists of 13.86PB (12.31PiB) disk, with an additional 19.5 PB of backup tape capacity. The disk storage is based on six DDN 10K storage arrays populated with near-line SAS 3TB 72000rpm HDDs. Metadata storage is based on two IBM DS3524s populated with SAS 300GB 10krpm HDDs. The backup capability is managed via Tivoli Storage Manager, based on an IBM TS3500 tape library with 12 drives.

Following the upgrade, the RDF will consist of 23PB of usable storage, with an additional 48 PB tape backup in an offsite location. The disk storage is based on seven DDN 12K couplets and the Metadata storage on NetApp EF550/EF540 arrays populated with SSD drives. The backup capability is managed by Tivoli Storage Manager, and an IBM TS3500 tape library with 36 drives.

Upgrade Timeline

The upgrade is currently going to plan. The full schedule is as below. We will advise if the plan changes in any way.

• 0800 Monday 9th March : RDF Unavailable
• 1800 Friday 20th March: RDF available

In summary you should expect the RDF to be unavailable from 0800 GMT on Monday 9th March until 1800 GMT on Friday 20th March. The RDF outage will not impact on any other aspect of ARCHER so you will be able to access /work and /home as usual and execute jobs.