Mass Storage System (MSS)

The MSS is an archive of computational analyses and observational data used for long-range and long-term atmospheric research.The bulk of the data is generated by global climate-simulation models, mesoscale weather models, and other earth science models executed on supercomputers; but the MSS also contains irreplaceable historic records and data from satellites and field experiments.

The MSS is composed of five silos that hold nearly 30,000 cartridges. When a program is submitted that calls for data stored on one of the cartridges, the robotic LSM device will retrieve the appropriate cartridge and place it in a drive, then reshelve it after use.

The tape archive is front-ended by 48 Terabytes of StorageTek RAID, which is known as the MSS internal disk cache. This disk cache provides an overall read hit ratio of 60 to 70 percent for files up to 1 gigabyte in size.

In early 2008, NCAR's Mass Storage System (MSS) surpassed 5 petabytes of data storage (including second copies), with a net growth rate of 80 - 100 terabytes per month. While some of the data stored on the NCAR MSS originate from field experiments and observations, the bulk of the data is generated by global climate-simulation models, mesoscale weather models, and other earth-science models that run on supercomputers.