LNCS 3762 - Shelter from the Storm Building a Safe strongArchivestrong in.pdfVIP

Shelter from the Storm: Building a Safe Archive in a Hostile World Jon MacLaren, Gabrielle Allen, Chirag Dekate, Dayong Huang, Andrei Hutanu, and Chongjie Zhang Centre for Computation and Technology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 {maclaren, gallen, cdekate, dayong, ahutanu, czhang}@ Abstract. The storing of data and configuration files related to scien- tific experiments is vital if those experiments are to remain reproducible, or if the data is to be shared easily. The prescence of historical (observed) data is also important in order to assist in model evaluation and devel- opment. This paper describes the design and implementation process for a data archive, which was required for a coastal modelling project. The construction of the archive is described in detail, from its design through to deployment and testing. As we will show, the archive has been designed to tolerate failures in its communications with external services, and also to ensure that no information is lost if the archive itself fails, i.e. upon restarting, the archive will still be in exactly the same state. 1 Introduction The Southeastern Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction (SCOOP) Program’s Coastal Model Project [15], is an ongoing collaboration between the modeling research community and operational agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The project aims to take today’s cutting- edge activities from the research community, and develop these so they can form the basis for tomorrow’s operational systems. Part of this project’s work involves the regular execution of coastal modeling codes, such as ADCIRC [13] and SWAN [11], for various geograp