How to serve a dozen dishes

© ASTRON

ALTA, The Apertif Long Term Archive system, has reached an important milestone. On 24 October, the hardware for the online storage system hosted in Dwingeloo was 'racked and stacked' in the basement of the ASTRON building. The core of the system is formed by two hundred and forty 10 terabyte hard disk drives which were one by one laid comfortably in their drawers, a dozen disks in each drawer. From these warm and safe beds, they will store and serve almost countless bits of scientific data to the astronomical community. The coming months the team will continue to work hard on the installation and configuration of the ALTA system and prepare it to serve the exquisite meals that the twelve Apertif dishes will bring us.