05.06.2023

Together, the two libraries can store 300 petabytes (300,000 terabytes) of climate model data securely and energy-efficiently on magnetic tape cartridges over long periods of time. They have a total of 22,000 slots and 20 new LTO-8 drives that can read and write LTO-7 Type M and LTO-8 tape cartridges. This doubles the number of LTO-8 tape drives previously available to the DKRZ archive.

Each of the two tape robots of each library can grab packets to 10 tapes off the shelves, and take the one needed to mount it in a tape drive.

This procurement marks the beginning of the replacement of the Oracle Storagetek SL8500 magnetic tape libraries, which have been in operation at DKRZ for 14 years and will have to be gradually replaced by new libraries in the coming years. As a result, the DKRZ archive now has a total of nine magnetic tape libraries with a total of about 90,000 slots, one of which is located at the MPCDF (Max Planck Computing and Data Facility) in Garching near Munich. The total of 115 drives of the types LTO-5, 6, 7 and 8 allow a continuous data transfer rate of 15 gigabyte/s.

The data is managed by a hierarchical storage management system from Stronglink. The DKRZ archive currently stores a data volume of 180 petabytes of climate model data from the last 30 years, with over 20 petabytes of new data being added annually.