Facilities

The DMS begins at the data acquisition interface between camera and telescope subsystems and flows through to the data products accessed by end users. On the way, it moves through three types of managed facilities supporting data management, as well as end user sites that may conduct science using Rubin Observatory data or pipeline resources on their own computing infrastructure.

Facilities will include a mountain summit/base facility, a central archive center, multiple data access centers, and a system operations center. The data will be transported over high-speed optical fiber links from the mountain summit/base facility in South America to the archive center in the U.S. Data will also flow from the mountain summit/base facility and the archive center to the data access centers over existing fiber optic links.

The Mountain Summit/Base Facility comprises the mountaintop telescope site, where data acquisition must interface to the other Rubin Observatory subsystems, and the base facility, where the data is stored and routed on to the Archive Center.

The Archive Center is a supercomputing class data center with high reliability and availability. This is where the data will undergo complete processing and re-processing and where it will be permanently stored. A full copy is made to IN2P3 in France where half the data release processing is done. The archive center is also the main repository feeding the distribution of Rubin Observatory data to the community.

A network of data access centers are envisioned for broad user access, according to a tiered access model where the tiers define the capacity and response available. There are two project-funded data access centers co-located with the base facility and the archive center. These centers replicate all of the Rubin Observatory data to facilitate disaster recovery and provide open and public interfaces to the Rubin Observatory data products. 

The Rubin Observatory Headquarters will also host the System Operations Center (SOC). The SOC provides a control room and large-screen display for supervisory monitoring and control of the DMS. Network and facility status are available as well as the ability to "drill down" to individual facilities. Data Management (DM) support to observatory science operations and an end user help desk are also at the Headquarters.