British Antarctic Survey Navigates Surge of Big Data Scientific Research Requirements with High-Density, Scalable DDN Hybrid Flash Storage
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Europe
Country
- United Kingdom
Product
- DDN’s SFA7700X® hybrid flash storage appliance
Tech Stack
- Lustre® Parallel File System
- VMware®
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Digital Expertise
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Business Operation
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is one of the world’s leading environmental research centers with a long and distinguished history carrying out research and surveys in the Antarctic and surrounding regions. As a component of the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), the Cambridge-based center has undertaken the majority of Britain’s scientific research on and around the frozen continent for more than 60 years. The organization’s current research strategy is called Polar Science for Planet Earth. As part of this mission, BAS combines advanced science programs with essential logistics to carry out complicated and sophisticated scientific field research. To that end, BAS employs more than 400 staff and supports three research stations in the Antarctic located at Rothera, Halley and Signy, as well as two stations on South Georgia, at King Edward Point and Bird Island. The organization also uses ice-strengthened ships, such as the RSS James Clark Ross, and five aircraft, to drive advancements in oceanographic and climate research.
The Challenge
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) was facing a surge in data storage requirements due to its participation in a major global initiative and increased use of scientific modeling. The organization was collecting 10 times the amount of data it gathered just 10 years ago, with the rate of change increasing dramatically. This put pressure on their data collection and storage systems. In addition, BAS became part of a major global initiative, called Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN), which required a major storage expansion. The challenge was finding a solution that could meet the organization’s requirements for high-capacity, high-performance storage within its budget parameters.
The Solution
To expand storage capacity, BAS selected DDN’s SFA7700X hybrid flash storage appliance, which is purpose-built to tackle big data requirements. Moreover, the SFA7700X enabled BAS to combine the power of Flash technology with the economy of HDDs to lower overall total cost of ownership. The SFA7700X was attractive to BAS due to its ability to mix and match storage types in one enclosure. This was the first time BAS was able to deploy SSD drives, which enabled them to blend some of the fastest online storage with near-line storage. With DDN SFA7700X storage in place, BAS now is ideally positioned to extract maximum value from its ever-increasing big data requirements. For instance, scientific researchers fully utilize the mix of flash and rotating media to speed performance for a variety of applications and climate models.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Revolutionizing Medical Training in India: GSL Smart Lab and the LAP Mentor
The GSL SMART Lab, a collective effort of the GSL College of Medicine and the GSL College of Nursing and Health Science, was facing a challenge in providing superior training to healthcare professionals. As clinical medicine was becoming more focused on patient safety and quality of care, the need for medical simulation to bridge the educational gap between the classroom and the clinical environment was becoming increasingly apparent. Dr. Sandeep Ganni, the director of the GSL SMART Lab, envisioned a world-class surgical and medical training center where physicians and healthcare professionals could learn skills through simulation training. He was looking for different simulators for different specialties to provide both basic and advanced simulation training. For laparoscopic surgery, he was interested in a high fidelity simulator that could provide basic surgical and suturing skills training for international accreditation as well as specific hands-on training in complex laparoscopic procedures for practicing physicians in India.
Case Study
IoT platform Enables Safety Solutions for U.S. School Districts
Designed to alert drivers when schoolchildren are present, especially in low-visibility conditions, school-zone flasher signals are typically updated manually at each school. The switching is based on the school calendar and manually changed when an unexpected early dismissal occurs, as in the case of a weather-event altering the normal schedule. The process to reprogram the flashers requires a significant effort by school district personnel to implement due to the large number of warning flashers installed across an entire school district.
Case Study
Implementing Robotic Surgery Training Simulator for Enhanced Surgical Proficiency
Fundacio Puigvert, a leading European medical center specializing in Urology, Nephrology, and Andrology, faced a significant challenge in training its surgical residents. The institution recognized the need for a more standardized and comprehensive training curriculum, particularly in the area of robotic surgery. The challenge was underscored by two independent studies showing that less than 5% of residents in Italian and German residency programs could perform major or complex procedures by the end of their residency. The institution sought to establish a virtual reality simulation lab that would include endourological, laparoscopic, and robotic platforms. However, they needed a simulator that could replicate both the hardware and software of the robotic Da Vinci console used in the operating room, without being connected to the actual physical console. They also required a system that could provide both basic and advanced simulation training, and a metrics system to assess the proficiency of the trainees before they performed surgical procedures in the operating theater.
Case Study
Edinburgh Napier University streamlines long-distance learning with Cisco WebEX
• Geographically dispersed campus made in-person meetings costly and inconvenient.• Distance-learning programs in Malaysia, India, and China required dependable, user-friendly online tools to maximize interaction in collaborative workspaces.• Virtual learning environment required a separate sign-in process, resulting in a significant administrative burden for IT staff and limited adoption of collaboration technology.
Case Study
8x increased productivity with VKS
Before VKS, a teacher would spend a lot of time showing a group of 22 students how to build a set of stairs within a semester of 120 hours. Along with not leaving the teacher much time to provide one-on-one support for each student to properly learn carpentry, it also left a considerable amount of room for error. Key information would be misinterpreted or lost as the class was taught in the typical show-and-tell way.
Case Study
Scalable IoT Empowering GreenFlex's Sustainable Growth
GreenFlex, a company that supports sustainable development, decarbonization, and energy efficiency, faced several challenges in its quest to expand its business. The company needed to deploy a robust and sustainable IoT technology to support its growth. It was crucial for them to monitor and control devices at customer sites in a safe and reliable manner. They also needed to integrate devices across a range of communication protocols and gather and act on data to meet efficiency targets. GreenFlex had previously built IoT capabilities into its digital platform, GreenFlexIQ, to monitor and manage customer sites remotely. However, they soon realized that they needed a new platform to support their ambitions. They needed a platform that could scale to connect more devices for production management and make it easier for the operations team to manage devices in the field.
