|
|
The ESO
NGAS Project
|
|
|
|
Next Generation
Archive System
Introduction
Late in 2000 ESO's Data Management Division started an initiative to face the challenges of the exploding data rate coming from the new instruments of the VLT. The main goal of this initiative is to give recommendations for the design and implementation of archive systems which are able to cope with a data rate in the order of TBs per night (worst-case). On the other hand international activities like Virtual Observatories (AVO/NVO) and AstroGrid have been initiated to enable scientific exploitation across astronomical archives world-wide. The ESO Science Archive as one of the biggest astronomical data centers should certainly play a central role in a future AVO, but it has to be prepared to support not only high level query mechanisms but also data reduction on substantial fractions of the whole data holdings. With the current archive design, where only one or two computers are building the gateway to the whole archive, large scale data reduction is unfeasible. Massive parallelism is the most promising approach to address this requirement. On this background the NGAS (Next Generation Archive System) was initiated April 2001 and has been operating since July 2001. Since then the project has undergone continues enhancement and development. |
NGAS
Implementation
The following slide show gives an overview of the NGAS Project: PPS - HTML. Building up such a system is not so much a hardware problem, but mainly a
problem of defining procedures and writing robust software to support the
critical day to day archiving of bulk data. Retrieval and processing has to
be optimized especially for the topology to enable efficient reduction and
distribution of data out of the science archive. |
Documentation
NGAS
Operations & Troubleshooting Guide Manual to assist the NGAS Operators in carrying out their
daily tasks in connection with NGAS. Contains also information to assist the
operator in handling problems with the system. NGAS
Acceptance Test Plan & Hands-On Tutorial This document is the Acceptance Test Plan for NGAS. It
should be applied by the 'customer' receiving a new NGAS System or an upgrade
of an existing NGAS System on the site. As the document is a walk-through of
many essential features of the system, it can also be used as a Hands-On
Tutorial to train NGAS Operators for the tasks to be maintained to operate
the system. This is a comprehensive manual for the NGAS SW, the Next
Generation Archive Handling System (NG/AMS). It provides in-depth information
about the standard operation of the NG/AMS SW but also information enabling
an expert user to extend the system by adding plug-ins to it. |
Send comments to ngast@eso.org
Last modified: Fri Jun 9 13:43:53 CEST 2006