Visualization, analysis and storage servers for the aquarius project

水瓶座项目是一项主要的计算计划，旨在研究与星系形成相关的最小尺度上冷暗物质（CDM）的聚集。CDM被认为是宇宙中物质的主要形式，在过去的几年里，它已经成为宇宙结构形成的范例。暗物质与“暗能量”（支配着今天宇宙在最大尺度上的膨胀）一起，是我们对自然世界的理解中最重要的当代难题之一。在非常小的尺度上对CDM星团方式的经验理解——水瓶座的主要目标——将有助于限制暗物质的本质，并对银河天文学、宇宙学和粒子天体物理学等不同领域产生重大影响。特别是，水瓶座将大大推进战略：(1)探索我们银河系的形成；（ii）寻找暗物质湮灭的信号；（三）设计直接探测暗物质的实验。它们提供了重要的诊断和测试，将有助于验证CDM范例。水瓶座项目使用了一些世界上最大的学术超级计算机，包括位于荷兰格罗宁根大学的IBM-BlueGene超级计算机STELLA，以及位于德国慕尼黑莱布尼茨超级计算机中心的HLRB-II Altix超级计算机。通过竞标，我们在这些中心获得了总计超过1000万CPU小时的服务。到目前为止，模拟已经产生了超过100Tb的数据，这些数据正在由世界各地的各种合作者进行分析。我们要求一个计算机系统来存储、分析和可视化部分水瓶座数据集在维多利亚大学。

The Aquarius Project is a major computational initiative designed to investigate the clustering of cold dark matter (CDM) on the smallest scales relevant to the formation of galaxies. CDM is believed to be the dominant form of matter in the Universe, and it has become in the past few years the paradigm of structure formation in the Universe. Together with "dark energy" (which governs today the universal expansion on the largest scales) dark matter is one of the premier contemporary puzzles in our understanding of the natural world. An empirical understanding of the way CDM clusters on very small scales---the main goal of Aquarius---would help to constrain the nature of the dark matter and has had major impact on fields as diverse as Galactic Astronomy, Cosmology, and Particle Astrophysics. In particular, Aquarius will greatly advance strategies: (i) for exploring the formation of our Galaxy; (ii) for searching for signals from dark matter annihilation; and (iii) for designing experiments for direct detection of dark matter. These provide important diagnostics and tests that will serve to validate the CDM paradigm. The Aquarius project has used some of the largest academic supercomputers in the world, including STELLA,an IBM-BlueGene supercomputer sited at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and the HLRB-II Altix supercomputer at the Leibniz Supercomputer Center in Munich, Germany. Through competitive bidding, we were awarded a total of more than 10-million CPU hours at those centers. The simulations have so far produced more than 100Tb of data which are being analyzed by various collaborators across the world. We request a computer system to store, analyze, and visualize parts of the Aquarius dataset at the University of Victoria.