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01-02-2012
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LOFAR data archive outgrowing ATLAS

Submitter: Hanno Holties
Description: It has from the start been clear that LOFAR would pose an interesting challenge with respect to the shear volume of the data it will produce. Estimates are that in full production LOFAR will produce over five Petabytes of data each year to be stored in the Long Term Archive (LTA). The LTA takes care of the long-term storage, distribution, and further analysis of LOFAR data by astronomers world wide. Even while LOFAR operations are still in a preliminary phase, the LOFAR LTA already entered the Petabyte era in 2011.

Around New Year, the volume of LOFAR data stored in the LTA passed the two Petabyte mark and there are currently almost 100,000 unique files stored in the LTA. As reported in a news item on the SARA website, the volume of LOFAR data has now outgrown the volume of ATLAS data on BiG Grid managed ‘permanent’ storage (i.e. tape).

NB A Petabyte is the next step in storage capacity after a Terabyte and is the equivalent of roughly two hundred thousand DVD’s. (1 Petabyte = 1,000 Terabyte = 1,000,000 Gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 Megabyte = 1,000,000,000,000 kilobyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000 byte)
Copyright: ASTRON
 
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