Recent Advances In The FSL Central Facility Data Systems

Abstract

The NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) Central Facility ingests, processes, stores, and distributes large volumes of conventional and experimental meteorological data in support of FSL's research, development, and technology transfer mission. Over the years, as data requirements have changed and hardware and software technologies advanced, the real-time systems responsible for these data have evolved, as well. Recent advances to promote reliability and maintainability include the use of such Open Source packages as High-Availability (HA) Linux, SystemImager, and Concurrent Versions System (CVS). Unidata's Local Data Manager (LDM) plays a prominent role throughout the system to provide reliable and easily configurable data transport and event triggering. Finally, the development of the Object Data System(ODS) (Hamer, 2005), which is replacing the earlier NIMBUS system (Wahl et al., 1997), has streamlined software development and configuration management for the many point, gridded, radar, and satellite data sets processed within the Central Facility. This paper provides some insight into the scope of FSL's real-time data system, describing the current state of the system and discussing the range of services provided. We also highlight several solutions that have been implemented recently, and offer several ideas for the future.