Upgrades Improve Site Data System Reliability

 
Published: 15 September 2004

Measurements from field instruments, such as the radar wind profiler (center) and radio acoustic sounding system (perimeter) in Barrow, are collected and transmitted by the Site Data System.

Site Data Systems are a critically important element of the ARM Climate Research Facility’s ability to collect and transmit data on clouds and radiative properties from research instrumentation in the field. To increase system reliability and reduce the potential for server crashes resulting in data loss, ARM Climate Research Facility operations staff began upgrading the Site Data Systems this summer. These upgrades include updating the basic input/output system (BIOS) software and firmware associated with data storage needs that are handled by DellTM computers for the Site Data Systems at all the ARM Climate Research Facility sites. The first series of upgrades took place in mid-July at the ARM Climate Research Facility North Slope of Alaska (NSA) locale. With only a few hours of downtime during the night (to perform a system backup), server upgrades went smoothly at both the Atqasuk and Barrow NSA sites. Final steps at NSA include updating the Dell computers that collect data from the various instruments. This procedure will not involve any Site Data System downtime, but will only delay the data collection for a short period.

As increasingly sophisticated technology becomes available, occasional system-wide upgrades are needed to ensure compatibility and reliability in system performance. Part of this process involves the BIOS firmware, which basically operates as a computer’s built-in “starter kit.” Programmed into the read-only memory chip of a computer’s motherboard, this firmware completes the startup or “boot” process of the computer, and serves as the interface between the computer hardware and the rest of the machine’s software. Because of the wide variety of settings that can be applied to BIOS firmware, consistency is the key for ARM Climate Research Facility site upgrades. Based on the successful model used at NSA, BIOS upgrades will next take place at the Darwin site in the Tropical Western Pacific locale.