Red Hat’s data center technology is helping accelerate CERN’s research into particle physics and the origin of the planet.

European nuclear researcher CERN has installed Red Hat’s enterprise Linux, virtualization and technical account management services for nearly 600 servers running critical applications.

With counter productive data loss likely to occur with every incident of downtime during particle acceleration exercises, the CERN data center asked Red Hat to help create the most reliable systems available.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs some of the organization’s most critical applications, including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) logging server and the central financial and HR systems for CERN’s members of personnel and 11,000 users.

The Red Hat systems will control and monitor functions for around one million systems and processes, including detectors, temperature sensors, and power supply units as well as entire software processes.

The CERN infrastructure is comprised of physical two-socket servers and is virtualized using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on Dell PowerEdge M610 servers with Intel Nehalem or Ivy Bridge processors with between 96 GB and 256 GB RAM per server.

Storage is one a Brocade FC8 SAN with a NetApp data storage system.

CERN said Red Hat’s technology improves the range of availability of machines for complex operations and applications.

The CERN project managers chose Red Hat because machine stability is critical in any study of the differences between matter and antimatter, and the LHC’s operating system is a crucial choice.

In addition, Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux was also chosen for the CERN data center as it needs minimal administrative overhead, according to Tim Bell, group leader of IT operating systems and infrastructure services at CERN.

"We appreciate the stability and availability of solutions from Red Hat,” Bell said.

“This is extremely important to us because we use these solutions in highly critical areas where commercial support, resilience and reliability are key requirements.”

Bell also cited Red Hat’s flexibility and fast installment for key applications and services.

Critical applications aside, the CERN Red Hat subscription will also use Technical Account Management (TAM) services to assign a dedicated technical contact person from Red Hat to help staff at CERN over long term strategy decisions and short term operational issues.