IBM p660 eServers running the IBM AIX operating system (OS) and the Informix Dynamic Server Enterprise Edition are used by the CLASS (Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System) to process and deliver information from about 41TBs of data gathered by the U.S. National Climatic Data Center and the Office of Satellite Data Processing and Distribution. Each site runs two dual-processor IBM p660 eServers running AIX with a robotic tape library, says Charles Bryant, computer specialist. Both sites share an identical data catalog and are synchronized in close to real-time so that either site can fail over to the other. The link is a 45Mbps T3 channel on a 155Mbps Synchronous Optical Network OC-3 dedicated connection. IBM Informix Dynamic Server Enterprise Edition replication ensures that the two archives remain synchronized within a few seconds of real-time. At class.noaa.gov, users can search and order form over two dozen available types of data products, including those on atmospheric, coastal, ocean, and other conditions. Requests are filled in minutes, hours, or days, based on data set sizes. CLASS has about 24,600 registered users, including public/private sector climatic researchers and weather forecasters. In time, users will be able to order and pay for data sets online. Topics covered are CLASS use of spatial extensions to standard RDBMS formats; cost savings of CLASS (about $220 million) as compared to operation of individual archival systems; and NOAA's future metadata repository, which will use an Oracle RDBMS, ArcIMS mapping from ESRI, eXtensible Markup Language (XML), XML stylesheets, and Java access tools from Blue Angel Technologies.