The BABAR Long Term Data Preservation and Computing Infrastructure
Marcus Ebert, Michael Roney, Randall J. Sobie · EPJ Web of Conferences · 2025
BABAR stopped data collection in 2008, but its data is still analyzed by the collaboration. In 2021, a new computing system outside the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory was developed, the new BABAR Long Term Data Analysis system (LTDA). Major changes were needed to maintain the collaboration’s ability to analyze the data, while the user-facing front ends needed to remain unchanged. This LTDA system was put into production in 2022, and we will describe its unique infrastructure, which is based on cloud computing resources in Victoria, Canada; data storage at GridKa, Germany, with streaming data access via XRootD; and the ability to analyze data from any location. We will describe the advantages of the system, explain how to run an old and outdated OS in current infrastructures, discuss complications encountered during system development, and share our experience running and using it for more than two years. The design and implementation can help other groups and experiments planing data preservation with the goal of maintaining the ability to analyze their data, even decades after data collection has ceased.