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History
The SUNET Archive began its life in 1990 as an ftp archive created by Lars Gunnar Olsson of the IT-Department at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, or SLU, in Ultuna, a few kilometers outside of Uppsala. The archive became a SUNET facility in 1993 and was assigned the name ftp.sunet.se. In the SUNET newsletter SUNETTEN from 1993 it is noted that the archive already contains 4 GB of data and there is room for another 4 GB. By 1994 the SUNET Archive was ranked among the largest and most visited archives in the world. Its total storage capacity was then 28 GB. In 1996 the archive had been enlarged to handle 150 Swedish + 300 foreign ftp users simultaneously, and the amount of data had grown to almost 50 GB. A major upgrade was carried out in 1998 and the archive could then handle 300 Swedish + 600 foreign simultaneous users. Each week some 3 million files were downloaded from the archive. The archive is still located at the IT-department at SLU but Lars Gunnar Olsson has since been succeeded by Johan Hofvander. By this time the SUNET Archive was also described as the second largest ftp archive in Europe. By 1999 the archive could manage 1200 simultaneous users, wherein 450 sessions were reserved for domestic connections. As we entered the new millennium, Johan Hofvander left the IT-department at SLU and the entire SUNET Archive became subsequently transferred to the IT Support Department (ITS) of the Uppsala University. In 2002 the board of SUNET, together with ITS, decided to perform yet another major upgrade. The project proved more time-consuming than was expected, and finally the original solution chosen was abandoned and work resumed with a new solution based on IBM total storage and SAN FS (Storage Area Network File System). The new archive was launched in 2004, and after a year of testing the new solution was approved in 2005. As the majority of the archive visitors at that time used web browsers, and the http protocol was becoming the predominant method of connection over that of ftp, it was decided to rename the archive. The new name became 'The SUNET Archive' and the corresponding url was then archive.sunet.se. The old url ftp.sunet.se remains. In early 2007 IBM announced the withdrawal of the SAN FS product which was replaced by GPFS (General Parallell File System). In this new situation it was decided to perform another major upgrade of the archive. It was also decided that the ownership of the archive hardware should be transferred to ITS and that ITS act as a service provider towards SUNET. Work on this upgrade began in summer 2007 and is still in progress. On the first of october 2008 the IT deparment of Uppsala University changed its name to the Office for IT and Procurement. |
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This page is maintained by
archive@ftp.sunet.se
and was last updated
2009-06-03 14:27 CEST
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