Cis512 Case Study 2

Performance Degradation

One way in which the performance ability has decreased in astronomy archives is because the growth of new information exceeds the amount of previous archived information. An example of this is the NASA/IPAC (Infrared Processing and Analysis Center) IRSA (Infrared Science Archive).The new projects are going to require higher acquisition rates than what is currently available. The anticipated growth is going to max out the IRSA holdings. There is also a huge increase in the queries for the information; larger than ever before. The problem with this is that astronomy archives operate on a limited budget and the fix would require adding infrastructure. However, without some type of intervention, the entire system could be on the path to a complete breakdown.

Archival Techniques

Cloud computing is an option for the astronomy archiving. However, the problem with this is that the applications that are best suited for cloud computing are processing and memory intensive. Astronomy applications can be very I/O intensive, with the large amounts of image data, and this can be quite expensive under the commercial cloud fee structure.

Currently, it is more expensive to rent mass storage space with the Amazon cloud, rather than just to purchase it. Thus, it goes back to the same problem that the field of astronomy is on a fixed budget and there is not much room to incur additional costs. A complete cost analysis must be done to see if there is room in the budget to incur additional expenses of cloud computing.

One further option is for the community to keep an eye on the progress of other astronomy sectors who use a cloud technology. For example, the Canadian Astronomy Data Center (CADC) has currently moved its entire operation to a cloud technology. Right now they are the only ones doing this, so the performance should be monitored by other agencies to see if it would be fruitful in the future.

Emerging Technology

A cluster is defined as a...