High throughput data removal system for the ALICE experiment in Run 3

Abstract The ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is dedicated to studying heavy-ion collisions to investigate the properties of quark–gluon plasma. Since its launch in 2009, ALICE has undergone three operational phases, accumulating substantial data: 7.4 petabytes (PB) in Run 1, 28 PB in Run 2, and 423 PB in Run 3 (as of February 2025). The transition from Run 2 to Run 3 included significant upgrades to ALICE’s detectors and Data Acquisition System, resulting in a 12-fold increase in the collected data volume. This article presents a data removal tool developed for the ALICE experiment to efficiently manage storage resources. The tool consists of a web interface that allows ALICE operators to delete data and an automated workflow that, under certain conditions, removes temporary data and provides the data preparation group with a centralized interface for data management. Deployed in April 2024, the tool replaces the previous manual, email-based request system, eliminating inefficiencies and ensuring a faster, more structured, and scalable approach to data management.