IRA Data Center
Since 2004, the IRA Computing Center has hosted the INAF “Digital Information Services” data center. Its staff provides services nationwide and is committed to managing hardware resources and developing and integrating applications.
Alongside the Institute’s IT services, the IRA Computing Center continues its historic role as a data center specialized in radio astronomy data analysis, hosting and managing dedicated servers and contributing to the development and integration of software applications. The main infrastructures supported include the VLBI-IT software correlator, the clusters of the INAF Pleiadi computing system, the ALMA Regional Center, the LOFAR project, and dozens of other projects. The data center’s computing resources include over 120 nodes, configured differently in terms of number of cores (from 4 to 128) and memory (from 32 to 1024 GB), depending on the needs of the different applications. The total storage capacity is approximately 1.5 PB. The Data Center also has two 10 Gbit/s connections to the GARR network, one of which is dedicated to VLBI observation data processed by the VLBI-IT correlator.
Finally, the IRA is participating in the construction of the INAF National Data Center at the Bologna Technology Park, providing its decades of experience in managing computing infrastructures for astronomical data analysis.
The Institute of Radio Astronomy is involved in the following projects in the fields of big data and computer science:
