Automatic Data Workflow and Disk Management Tool for the ALICE Experiment.

CERN is an European research facility that operates the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC hosts four large experiments studying proton–proton and heavy-ion collisions at high energies. One of the four experiments is ALICE, specifically designed to study the physics of heavy-ion collisions. The experiments collect hundreds of PB of data each year and require complex mechanisms to maintain and distribute these data over many different storage elements around the world on the Worldwide LHC computing Grid. This paper describes a data management system used by ALICE, which maintains the data workflow from the experimental apparatus to the primary 150 PB disk storage. The system operates in real time and fulfills stringent requirements for transfer speed, transfer control, and monitoring. It is also completely automatic and autonomous, with sophisticated fault detection along the entire data transfer and registration process.