The CERN Node is not in production yet. Access to services is not guaranteed, and content and features may still change.
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EOSC Node CERN
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The CERN Node

A first-wave node of the EOSC Federation

The CERN Node strengthens the EOSC Federation by providing high-TRL services and technology essential for high-energy physics and interdisciplinary research. It integrates CERN's established platforms, including Rucio, REANA, CERNBox, Zenodo, and the CERN Virtual Research Environment, into a federated European infrastructure.

The objective is to support the exploitation of FAIR CERN Open Data through reproducible workflows, analysis facilities, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, making particle physics data and tools accessible to the broader scientific community.

Rollout stages

Stages describe what the Node offers you. Programme phases, further down this page, describe how we are building it.

  1. Stage 1In progress

    Education and outreach

    Education & Outreach-Focused Node

    Schools, universities, teachers and students, and anyone meeting real particle-physics data for the first time.

    The Node opens with the full CERN Open Data corpus, curated tutorials, and pre-configured analyses that run end to end in the browser with no setup, in the SWAN-powered VRE and as reproducible REANA workflows. This is the default experience for anyone who signs in.

    • ✓The full CERN Open Data corpus
    • ✓Curated tutorials
    • ✓Ready-made analyses that run end to end via the VRE
    • ✓A session sized for teaching and first analyses

    Good to know: Sessions are shared and modest: enough for a classroom exercise or a first real analysis, not for a large study. Signing in gets you this default experience, but each underlying tool (e.g. the VRE, REANA, CERNBox) is still requested individually from the services catalogue, not granted automatically.

    At public launch (October 2026)

  2. Stage 2In progress

    Research on open data

    Education and Research Node for Open Data

    Theorists, phenomenologists, and researchers taking a study on CERN open data to research grade.

    Everything in stage 1, and the Node also supports real research: collaborators bring their own code and run autonomous analysis against the open-data corpus, and package the result as a reproducible REANA workflow of their own.

    • ✓Autonomous analysis with your own code
    • ✓Package your own workflows for REANA
    • ✓Allocations beyond the teaching-sized default where the science needs them

    Good to know: Capacity is finite and shared, so anything beyond the default is decided case by case rather than granted automatically. The software delivery path for bring-your-own-code is still being designed.

    At public launch (October 2026)

  3. Stage 3Planned

    Multi-tier research node

    Multi-tiered Research Node with Extra Services for CERN Users

    The open-data community, joined by CERN users working on the LHC and other experiments.

    A multi-tier, research-capable platform within the EOSC Federation. Here, CERN users get full access to the power and capabilities of the central CERN facility on top of the Node's baseline services, and the scope moves beyond open data: researchers can work directly with their experiments' own data.

    • ✓Full access to the central CERN facility's compute and storage power
    • ✓Work with experiment data, not just the open-data corpus
    • ✓Access for CERN users to the Node's baseline services

    Good to know: This stage is planned, not scheduled.

    After launch

What to expect

The Node is public research infrastructure with finite, shared capacity. It is not a commercial cloud, and it does not try to be: sessions are sized for analysis of open data, and fair-use limits apply. If your work needs more than that, get in touch and we will look at it case by case. For concrete figures, see the FAQ.

Coming to this page

Documentation and features we plan adding as the Node matures.

  • User / use policy

    In progress

    Terms governing who can use the Node and how.

    At public launch (October 2026)

  • Flexible, customisable quota limits

    Planned

    A more granular resource-allocation model, beyond today's fixed teaching-sized default.

    After launch (targeted Q1 2027)

  • Architecture description

    In progress

    How the Node's services fit together technically.

    At public launch (October 2026)

  • Use cases documentation

    In progress

    Worked examples of how different kinds of users put the Node to work.

    After launch (targeted Q4 2026)

Track live service uptime on the status page, browse the full services catalogue, check the FAQ, or see who else is involved on the Scientific Collaboration page. This Node is also listed on the EOSC Federation site ↗.