At CERN, a dedicated FATMEN server exists on an IBM RS6000 machine. The catalogues maintained on this system, which are automatically kept in synchronisation with those on the CERNVM system, may be accessed from remote nodes via NFS, or via the facilities provided in CSPACK.
Remote systems may retain local copies or extracts of the central catalogue. These are useful for systems with poor network connections to CERNVM (or the nearest production centre running FATMEN) or for systems which will mainly process 'closed-shop' data. In all cases, updates to the local catalogue are forwarded to CERNVM and all other production centres.
Remote FATMEN catalogues are currently in use on several IBM systems, such as LEPICS, IN2P3, SACLAY and UKACRL. They are also be installed on various VMS and Unix machines (including the Cray).
The FATMEN catalogue servers distribute updates according to entries in configuration files. Updates may be sent over Bitnet, DECnet or TCP/IP connections. More details concerning the distribution of updates are given in the installation section of this manual.