Software and Hardware
The software runs on a system that was written specifically for it, allowing for extensive customization for astronomical needs that would not have been possible with general purpose database software. The scripts are designed to be as platform independent as possible, given the need to facilitate mirroring on different systems around the world, although the growing use of Linux as the operating system of choice within astronomy has led to increasing optimization of the scripts for installation on that platform.
The main ADS server is located at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a dual 64-bit X86 Intel server with two quad-core 3.0 GHz CPUs and 32 GB of RAM, running the CentOS 5.4 Linux distribution. Mirrors are located in Brazil, China, Chile, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, United Kingdom, and the Ukraine.
Read more about this topic: Astrophysics Data System
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