Alpenhorn

Alpenhorn is system for for managing an archive of scientific data files across multiple, independent sites. Alpenhorn was originally designed to manage the data produced by The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment.

Excluding the data archives themselves, the Alpenhorn system consists of three parts:

• The Data Index, a SQL database containing both information tracking the data files being managed by alpenhorn, and also configuration information about the alpenhorn system itself.

• The Alpenhorn Daemon, an executable (alpenhornd) designed to be long-running which is responsible for manipulating the files in the data archive. A separate instance of the daemon runs at each site containing data files.

• The Alpenhorn CLI, a command-line utility (alpenhorn) which allows querying and updating the Data Index, and indirectly, through the database, control operation of the daemons.

Contents

• Alpenhorn Demo
  • Introduction
  • Demo set-up
  • Starting the demo
  • Stopping and resetting the demo
  • Conventions used in this demo
  • Initialising the database
  • Start the first daemon
  • Importing files
  • Syncing files between nodes
  • Dealing with corruption
  • Deleting files
  • Auto-actions
  • Transport disks and the Sneakernet
  • Next steps

• Index

• Search Page