Case Study: CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) achieves faster research and discovery with Quantum Corporation's StorNext

Quantum StorNext Helps CERN Accelerate Research and Discovery

CERN’s ALICE experiment, one of the world’s largest particle-physics projects, needed a high-performance storage solution to manage the massive, sustained data streams produced by particle collisions — roughly 1.5 GB/s continuously and more than a petabyte per month. The acquisition system required local buffering three kilometers from the main computing center and fast, scalable shared access across dozens of Linux nodes; traditional Linux NFS proved inadequate for the aggregated bandwidth and client-scale requirements.

Quantum StorNext was implemented as a clustered file system with distributed LAN clients, InfoTrend Fibre Channel arrays, QLogic networking and dozens of servers and FC ports, using StorNext’s Affinity to direct traffic to specific disks for peak performance. The deployment delivered continuous, simultaneous access while avoiding vendor lock-in, achieved up to 4.5 GB/s write and 2.5 GB/s read performance (sustaining 2.5 GB/s during a heavy‑ion month), and helped CERN collect hundreds of terabytes per run and over 2 PB of data in 2010.

CERN

Pierre Vande Vyvre

Project Leader