1. NCEP Central Operations Capabilities “Where America’s Climate, Weather, Ocean, and Space Prediction Services Begin” Brent Gordon NCEP/NCO/Systems Integration Branch NextGen System of Systems Workshop October 7, 2009

2. 2 NCO Mission Execute the NCEP operational model suite –Create climate, weather, ocean and environmental hazard products Manage improvements to the NCEP model suite and supporting infrastructure –Model enhancements, other infrastructure Develop meteorological software –Used by the NCEP Centers to create forecaster generated products Manage the flow of data and products –To and from the NCEP centers, partners, and customers We pride ourselves in delivering the goods on time and all of the time

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4. 4 NCEP Operational Model Suite NCO executes a world-class suite of operational models –20 model runs per day –4 to 24 different cycles per day Models span a wide spectrum, including: –Seasonal –Global –Ocean –Regional –Hurricane –Hazard

5. 5 OCCS Capability –69.7 Teraflops Linpack #36 Top 500 Nov 2008 –156 Power6 32-way Nodes –4,992 processors @ 4.7GHz –19,712 gigabytes memory –170 terabytes of disk space –100 terabyte tape archive Two Identical IBM Power6 Systems

6. 6 Network Diagram

7. 7 NCEP Compute Farm Compute capacity available outside of OCCS Runs smaller scale applications than OCCS 30 Blade system – Running VMWare –8 cores (processors) per blade –32 GB Ram per blade (960 GB total) –36 TB total Disk Space Currently at NCEP WWB –Will move to the NCWCP in College Park A offsite back-up is being developed in Fairmont, WV at this time

8. 8 Supported Standards/Formats NCEP adheres to WMO standards –GRIB, BUFR, CREX formats are primary NetCDF is supported as well –Limited support –NCO concern about lack of standards Fortran is predominant language on CCS –However C, C++, Java, Python are all used and supported by NCO We can support just about any standard –Must have a strong, solid business case –Must have continued backing of the development organization

9. 9 Road to Operations Solid CONOPS and Test plans are a must Applications using NCEP model data as primary input should be developed with the NCEP OCCS architecture in mind –Numerous standalone systems not a good business model Must preserve our 99.9% on time delivery rate –Applications must be robust and failsafe –Proper documentation a requirement