Case Study: CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) achieves 99.99984% availability and real-time monitoring with Software AG's Terracotta BigMemory

CERN Gets Reliable Data Access Down to a Science Using Terracotta

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, operates the Large Hadron Collider and dozens of complex systems that rely on continuous monitoring. Its Technical Infrastructure Monitoring (TIM) and DIAMON platforms ingest status data from roughly 120,000 sensors and feed real-time dashboards for technicians and engineers, so CERN needed a fail-safe, sub‑second, highly available monitoring solution that reduced downtime and maintenance risk.

CERN built the redundant C2MON platform using Terracotta BigMemory (BigMemory Max) as a shared in‑memory data fabric, enabling automatic failover and high-throughput, low-latency access across cluster nodes. The deployment delivered 99.99984% availability for TIM, significantly faster response times and higher throughput, fewer maintenance/repair incidents, and the ability to apply patches and add services without interrupting central monitoring.

CERN

Matthias Bräger

Project Manager, Technical Monitoring Software