Case Study: CERN achieves scalable, high-performance management of massive LHC Oracle data with NetApp storage

CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, operates the Large Hadron Collider and a global research community that generates petabytes of experimental data each year (more than 20 PB annually) and massive logging databases (trillions of rows). Its IT challenge was to provide continuous, high‑performance, highly scalable and cost‑effective database and storage services—able to handle bursts up to ~6 GB/s—without downtime for mission‑critical accelerator controls and experiments.

CERN standardized nearly all Oracle databases on NetApp storage, using Oracle RAC/dNFS over 10GbE plus NetApp Flash Cache with SATA, Data ONTAP Cluster‑Mode, and snapshot/clone/recovery features to deliver performance, availability and nondisruptive scalability. The result: 99% of Oracle data on NetApp (about 901 TB today), seamless growth (≈50 TB/year for accelerator DBs), dramatic recovery improvements (100 TB restores cut from weeks to minutes), zero NetApp data‑block losses, 15% more databases with no added staff, and a halved IT footprint with lower cost per capacity.

CERN

Frédéric Hemmer

Head, IT Department