The Grid Enabled Mass Storage System (GEMSS): the Storage and Data management system used at the INFN Tier1 at CNAF

The storage system currently used in production at the INFN Tier1 at CNAF is the result of several years of case studies, software development and tests. This solution, called the Grid Enabled Mass Storage System (GEMSS), is based on a custom integration between a fast and reliable parallel filesystem (the IBM General Parallel File System, GPFS), with a complete integrated tape backend based on the Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), which provides Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) capabilities, and the Grid Storage Resource Manager (StoRM), providing access to grid users through a standard SRM interface. Since the start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operation, all LHC experiments have been using GEMSS at CNAF for both disk data access and long-term archival on tape media. Moreover, during last year, GEMSS has become the standard solution for all other experiments hosted at CNAF, allowing the definitive consolidation of the data storage layer. Our choice has proved to be very successful during the last two years of production with continuous enhancements, accurate monitoring and effective customizations according to the end-user requests. In this paper a description of the system is reported, addressing recent developments and giving an overview of the administration and monitoring tools. We also discuss the solutions adopted in order to grant the maximum availability of the service and the latest optimization features within the data access process. Finally, we summarize the main results obtained during these last years of activity from the perspective of some of the end-users, showing the reliability and the high performances that can be achieved using GEMSS.