Stellar data recovery plan douses fire
Preliminary estimates put the losses at Mt Stromlo in excess of AU$20 million, as four telescopes, the equipment workshop, eight houses which had been occupied by staff and an administration building were destroyed by the blaze.
However, the observatory's legacy, millions of units of data collected as part of its research over the years, has been salvaged thanks to a comprehensive disaster recovery plan implemented by the Australian National University's (ANU) division of information.
According to Peter Young, head of the computer section at Mount Stromlo, the data created at the observatory was divided into two separate groups. Research data collected by the telescopes as part of national and international studies was channeled directly to a large StorageTek 9310 Powderhorn library, referred to as a 6000-slot data silo, located at the ANU's central Canberra campus.
Administration and research data held in the observatory's administration centre, the Woolley Building, was backed-up at regular intervals and stored in two separate locations remote from the facility.
As the fires approached on Saturday, Young managed to complete a final backup of the administration data. However, the Woolley Building was one of the few at the facility to survive the blaze.
"The administration building which contained our computer facilities was largely undamaged, it held all of our computer servers and equipment, and we are in the process of transporting most of that gear down to the ANU at the moment," Young said. "However, we have lost a large computing facility located in the 50-inch dome, but the data collected by those machines wasn't lost, it is all in the StorageTek silos in the ANU."
While the loss of the physical infrastructure comes as a blow to the observatory's research efforts, Young points out that the ability to recover the data means observatory staff are able to continue with their research while the centre is either rebuilt or relocated.
Bob Gingold, head of the head of the ANU's supercomputer facility and acting director of the division of information, said the disaster recovery plan had enabled the observatory to continue to provide its information resources to astronomers all over the world, essentially creating what may prove to be the world's first "virtual observatory".
"By re-establishing the data access down here at the ANU, and offering the information over the Internet to people from all over the world, we are enabling much of the observatory's work to continue," Gingold said.
Alongside the Powderhorn library the StorageTek equipment at the ANU Supercomputing Facility consists of eight T9840 tape drives, 4 T9940 tape drives, 2 Redwood tape drives as well as a tape and disk storage area network. In an effort to assist university and observatory staff in the recovery process StorageTek has offered a further 9730 tape drive on loan.
With the data still intact, observatory staff are being temporarily housed alongside the ANU's Supercomputing Facility, where about 20 terminals have been set up to provide access to mail servers, and research data.
However, Young points out the observatory will ultimately need more than data access in order to resume its scientific endeavors.
"At the moment we do have a physical space in which to work, but it is not quite conducive to a normal working environment, we have engineers and designers who need more room to and access to specialist equipment which was unfortunately lost in the blaze,"
Young said. "A lot of the staff also lived on Mt Stromlo and are coping with the loss of their homes and there was a lot of history in the building itself, we're all very sad."