Castor: CERN Advanced STORage Manager

(web.cern.ch)

34 points | by naves 1 hour ago

7 comments

  • mrlonglong 0 minutes ago
    They now have over an exabyte worth of data on tapes.
  • tempay 23 minutes ago
    I’m a little confused by this submission. CASTOR is the old system that has since been replaced by the CERN Tape Array since ~2020: https://cta.web.cern.ch/cta/

    This is mentioned on the page but it’s easy to miss.

    For the current status of tape storage at CERN see: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1471803/contributions/6967379/a...

    For reference, most disk storage for physics data uses an in-house solution called EOS: https://eos-web.web.cern.ch/eos-web/

    • bfkwlfkjf 3 minutes ago
      Does tape array replace castor? Just from the names it sounds like tape array is the actual storage, and castor is an abstraction that automatically decides what's kept on disk and what's kept on tape
  • Melatonic 24 minutes ago
    This is actually super useful for real world stuff. Thanks for this.

    Tape is boring but when an intern / AI / tectonic plate accidently destroys your database setup it is a huge lifesaver

    Anybody know what these fancy Oracle tapes are? Is it just their implementation of a regular standard?

  • perlgeek 25 minutes ago
    "Castor" was the name of a storage system used for transporting nuclear waste in Germany. There were quite a few protests against shipping nuclear waste through the country.

    Wouldn't have been my choice for a software project :-)

    • tempay 23 minutes ago
      It’s also French for Beaver which is more likely the origin of the name.
      • rzzzt 14 minutes ago
        It's also Latin and Greek for beaver which is more likely the origin of the name.
  • john_strinlai 1 hour ago
    looks like the image on the right is broken, but it is supposed to be: https://cta.web.cern.ch/cta/assets/images/namespace_statisti...

    (looks like this submission uses https://castor.web.cern.ch/content/home.html instead of https://castor.web.cern.ch/castor/ the second link does not have the broken image)

  • boznz 28 minutes ago
    The various CERN web pages such as this were a treasure trove of information when I was working on my last novel. I actually included a few paragraphs on Castor thinking of using it as a side-plot, but my editor cut the plot out along with a few other technical niceties. Sigh!
  • bitbytebane 8 minutes ago
    [dead]