1. BARC Scaleable Servers
Tom Barclay
Jim Gray
Presentation Northrop Grumman
6 Nov. BARC

2. Outline TerraServer: Past, Present, Future 10 Min
World Wide Telescope: 10 Min

3. TerraServer History “the gift that keeps taking”
SQL\Inst1
SQL\Inst2
SQL\Inst3
Spare
2200
Fiber SAN
Switches F G L K P Q E J O I H M N R S
1997 – 1998
SQL 7.0 Scalability Test
1.0 TB Db
1998 – 1999
SQL 7.0 Scalability Demo
2.0 Tb Db
2000 – 2002
Win 2k Cluster,
SQL Availability &
.NET Web Svcs Demo
3.3 TB Partitioned Db
2003 Retirement Donate to USGS / USDA
Plan aborted due lack of funding

4. TerraServer Achievements
Continues to be popular geo-spatial app
Averages 40k visitors / day; 1 million map views
.NET Web Service OpenGIS web map server used by public/private sector
Out “scales” competitor systems
Product X Geography Network does 50% of volume with 300% more equipment
Product Y handles 10 images per second peak vs. TerraServer’s 255 images/sec
Used in production applications – USDA, EPA, FEMA

5. TerraServer – What’s Next?
KVM / IP
“Storage Bricks”
“White-box commodity servers”
4tb raw / 2tb Raid1 SATA storage
Dual Hyper-threaded Xeon 2.4ghz, 4GB RAM
“Bunch”
3 “Storage Bricks” = 1 copy of TerraServer data, a.k.a. “bunch”
Data partitioned across 20 databases, and growing
No formal clustering s/w, application aware
Low Cost Availability
4 copies of the data
RAID1 SATA Mirroring
2 redundant “Bunches”
Web Application “bunch aware”
Load balances between redundant databases
Fails over to surviving database on failure

6. TerraServer – Non-System Stuff
Dynamic Map Re-projection
UTM to Geographic projection
Dynamic texture mapping?
New Data
1 foot resolution natural color imagery
Census Tiger data
Lights Out Management
MOM
Auto-backup / restore on drive failure

7. Outline TerraServer: Past, Present, Future 10 Min
World Wide Telescope: 10 Min

8. World Wide Telescope All astronomy data could be online
Federated as one database
All spectral bands
All instruments
All (recorded) times
Astronomers want to do this
have been trying to do it since 1500
I believe we can help:
Databases for the archives
Web services for the federation
Microsoft Connection?
Information at your fingertips for scientists

9. SkyServer.SDSS.org A modern archive Also used for education
Raw Pixel data lives in file servers
Catalog data (derived objects) lives in Database
Online query to any and all
Also used for education
150 hours of online Astronomy
Implicitly teaches data analysis
Interesting things
Spatial data search
Client query interface via Java Applet
Query interface via Emacs
Popular -- 1% of Terraserver 
Cloned by other surveys (a template design)
Web services are core of it.

10. Federation: SkyQuery.Net
Combine 4 archives initially
Just added 6 more
Send query to portal, portal joins data from archives.
Problem: want to do multi-step data analysis (not just single query).
Solution: Allow personal databases on portal
Problem: some queries are monsters
Solution: “batch schedule” on portal server, Deposits answer in personal database.

11. SkyQuery Structure Portal Each SkyNode publishes Plans Query (2 phase)
Integrates answers
Is itself a web service
Each SkyNode publishes
Schema Web Service
Database Web Service
Image Cutout
INT
SDSS
SkyQuery
Portal
FIRST
2MASS

12. Interesting Things
SkyQuery is the most functional Web Service on GriPhyN
Now the prototype for an Open Architecture
Being copied onto Oracle/DB2, Linux, …
Good test of .NET interop
Good side-by-side comparison of .NET