Abstract

The Canadian Advanced Network For Astronomical Research

Séverin Gaudet (NRC/HIA/CADC)

Pat Dowler (NRC), Sharon Goliath (NRC), Norman Hill (NRC), JJ Kavelaars (NRC), Michael Peddle (NRC), Chris Pritchet (UVic), David Schade (NRC)

The Canadian Advanced Network For Astronomical Research (CANFAR) is a newly funded 2½-year project that will deliver an operational system for the delivery, processing, storage, analysis, and distribution of very large astronomical datasets. The goal of CANFAR is to support forefront scientific discovery by members of major Canadian astronomical surveys. CANFAR will initially target four specific survey teams as prototypes to be used to develop the necessary tools and infrastructure. Ultimately the system will support an even broader range of projects in Canada and internationally.

The CANFAR infrastructure will be implemented as an International Virtual Observatory Alliance compliant web service infrastructure. All front-facing services will make use of IVOA protocols such as Registry, Simple Image Access, Simple Cone Search, Single Sign On, VOSpace, VOEvent, Table Access and Universal Work Service. A challenging feature of the proposal is to channel survey data through the Canadian research network to grid resources (components of Compute Canada). Internal services will make use of technologies from the grid computing community for storage, meta-scheduling, provisioning and virtualisation.

The talk will describe the context in which this project took shape, the high-level architecture of the infrastructure and development plan.

Mode of presentation: oral