\small The first months of 2018 were still affected by the effects of the flooding suffered in November 2017 and it was only in March 2018 that our data center was able to resume its full activity.
Despite this, the overall performance of Tier 1 for the LHC experiments and for the many other astroparticle and nuclear physics experiments was very good,
and enough to place CNAF's Tier 1 among the most productive in the WLCG ecosystem, as the reports of the experiments in this document show.
Even the activities of both the HPC clusters and the CLOUD@CNAF infrastructure resumed regular operations after the systems have been brought back to CNAF
\small The first months of 2018 were still affected by the effects of the flooding suffered in November 2017 and it was only in March 2018
that our data center was able to resume its full activity.
Despite this, the overall performance of the Tier 1 for the LHC experiments and for the many other astroparticle and nuclear physics experiments was very good,
and enough to place CNAF's Tier 1 among the most productive ones in the WLCG ecosystem, as the reports of the experiments in this document show.
Even the activities of both the HPC clusters and the Cloud@CNAF infrastructure resumed regular operations after the systems have been brought back to CNAF
from the sites that had temporarily hosted them.
The flooding had indeed beneficial repercussions in speeding up the decision to find a new location for our data center.
The move was already planned in order to face the challenges of HighLuminosity-LHC and of the astroparticle experiments that will begin their data acquisition
The move was already planned in order to face the challenges of High-LuminosityLHC and of the astroparticle experiments that will begin their data acquisition
in the second half of 2020, but the dramatic event of November 2017 made the fragility and weaknesses of the current installation clear.
Also, during 2018 three events have matured paving the way for the definition of a development strategy towards both a new site and a new computing model,
that includes the possibility to exploit the computing power of the HPC systems: the availability of a big area such as Bologna Tecnopolo where to install
the new CNAF Tier 1 data center; the possibility of a joint upgrade together with the Italian supercomputing center CINECA thanks to European and Italian funding;
our new data center; the possibility of a joint upgrade together with the Italian supercomputing center CINECA thanks to European and Italian funding;
the additional funds from the Italian Government for a project aimed at strengthening the INFN computing infrastructures.
Our R\&D activities have proceeded regularly, meeting the expected milestones and deliverables.
