CESNET has significantly expanded its data storage capacities

Prague, Ostrava, July 30th, 2022. The CESNET association launched one of the largest data storage facilities in the Czech Republic in Ostrava. The capacity available to users has been increased by 33 PB. The new object storage, designated CL3, was built and put into operation on the premises of the national supercomputer centre IT4Innovations, which is a partner of the association in the national e-infrastructure e-INFRA CZ.

Like the previous storage systems, named CL1 and CL2, the new CL3 is built on Ceph technology, which provides flexible options for setting up data redundancy. The storage system consists of 74 storage and 12 application servers and occupies the space of six rack cabinets. It houses over 2000 data disks with a total gross physical capacity of 33 PB. In addition to providing capacity to new and existing users, data from the outdated hierarchical storage in Ostrava will be moved to the CL3 object storage in the coming months.

CESNET data repositories are used for science and research purposes. Academic staff, students, and researchers have space to back up, archive and share data, and can store and move data in large volumes as they need it for their work.

The construction of the data storage facility in Ostrava was funded by the Operational Programme Research, Development and Education within the e-INFRA CZ: Modernisation project (identification number: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/18_072/0015659).

CESNET was founded in 1996 by universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Its aim is to operate and develop ICT services that form the national e-infrastructure for research, development, and education e-INFRA CZ. Research and development in the field of information and communication technologies are also an integral part of its activities. CESNET is an active partner in a number of foreign research infrastructures, such as the pan-European network for research, development, and education GÉANT, the European Grid Infrastructure EGI.eu, and the European Open Science Infrastructure EOSC. More at  www.cesnet.cz, www. e-infra.cz.