Brazilian Center for Physics Research (Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas - CBPF) opened on May 8 a new data center in its computational grid, the Javier Magnin DataGrid Center, at the institution’s headquarters. The aim is handle the data large volume generated in physics experiments resulting from international scientific collaborations.

The new facility have capacity to house up to 5 thousand computer hubs, the goal for the next three years. The grid currently has approximately 700 hubs. It occupies a 30-square meter room, with infrastructure fit to house the equipment, especially with regard to the cooling system, equipped with humidity control and thermal insulation.

The Javier Magnin DataGrid Center is an initiative from the High-Energy Experimental Physics Coordination (in Portuguese, Lafex) and astroparticle researchers of the Cosmology, Relativity and Astrophysics Institute (in Portuguese, ICRA) of the CBPF, within the scope of the institution’s expansion process, which began in 2006.

The data center will provide support to the Brazilian participation in the computational grid of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) particle accelerator, installed at the headquarters of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), in Switzerland.

The experiments carried out with support from the DataGrid use RNP network infrastructure, given that the CBPF is one of the institutions connected to the Rio Metropolitana network, which is the largest academic network built in a metropolitan area in Latin America. With 305 km of optic fiber, it connects 51 institutions in the city, by means of 85 points and university campuses, which have a speed of multiple gigabits and capacity to reach up to 1.9 Tb/s.

 (Source: CBPF)