CERN is to use a new remote data centre in Hungary to process and store data from its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, which is seeking to discover how the universe was formed.
CERN's data centre in Budapest is supported by the GANT terabit network and is hosted by he Wigner Research Centre for Physics.
The data centre will use multiple 100Gbps (Gigabits per second) links to support the Big Data needs of the LHC project.
GANT is the high speed European communication network dedicated to research and education. Co-funded by the European Commission, GANT contributes to the development of emerging internet technologies.
The LHC generates around 30 petabytes of data every year and the rapid distribution of this data to centres around the world for analysis is vital to the success of the LHC.
David Foster, deputy head of the CERN IT department, said, "Having a remote site and operations places a lot of requirements on the networking solutions. We will be implementing state-of-the-art capabilities to connect CERN and Wigner."
The Budapest facility will act as an extension to CERN's existing data centre as well as providing business continuity in case of any issues that could affect on-going service.
GANT's migration to the latest transmission and switching technology is designed to support up to 2Tbps (terabits per second) capacity across the core network, effectively future-proofing Europe's critical network up until 2020.
500Gbps capacity is available across the core network, delivering circuits across Europe that will allow individual users to transfer data at speeds of up to 100Gbps, or multiples thereof.
Earlier this year CERN said its researchers in Geneva were being held back from adopting cloud computing on any significant scale due to the delay in establishing a European regulatory framework for data protection.
