CERN, the
European Organization for Nuclear Research and one of the world's
leading laboratories for particle physics, has enhanced its mission
critical IT infrastructure.
CERN has extended
its business relationship with HP, in particular with the ProCurve
networking unit who will provide a large number of networking
products and solutions to the Geneva-based research organization,
where the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest
scientific instrument, is under construction.
In a drive to
improve the reliability, speed and performance of its overall IT
infrastructure, CERN has acquired 300 units of the ProCurve Switch
3400cl. The switches are being deployed on CERN's campus as well as
used to connect the technology infrastructure at CERN that powers
some of the world's leading scientific grid projects.
Ultimately, as
many as 700 ProCurve 3400cl switches, which deliver intelligent,
high performance at the edge of a network, could be deployed at
CERN in the coming years. Approximately 250 units of the Layer 3
Gigabit LAN switches are being deployed in a PC farm in CERN's
computer centre; the units will connect more than 6,000 PCs, which
will be at the heart of the LHC computing grid.
This scientific
grid is distributed globally to ensure that the relevant thousands
of scientists worldwide will be capable of producing, storing and
analysing an expected 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data
each year by 2007 when the LHC is scheduled to begin operation.
"The decision to
buy ProCurve was based on the high performance, low overall cost of
ownership and increased network security we believe ProCurve's
products will bring to our organization," comments David Foster,
Communications, Systems and Networking Group Leader, CERN.
"Furthermore, it was imperative that we chose a solid partner - one
that is dedicated to investing in high technology and committed to
long-term R&D partnerships.
"Sometimes our
technical specification is slightly ahead of the industry standard
- therefore we like working with vendors who are flexible enough to
invest in developing appropriate solutions. Their Adaptive EDGE
Architecture is in line with our campus strategy," adds Foster.