Switzerland-based Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), a part of the Novartis Research Foundation, is using Spectra Logic's T950 tape libraries to archive and backup critical biomedical research data.
As a research institute, FMI exploits cutting edge research technology for biomedical research. FMI scientists are at the forefront of biomedical discovery, and are using high-throughput sequencing and microscopy experiments that can produce terabytes of data from a signal experiment. As a result, more than 10TB of new data is written to the Spectra Logic tape libraries each week in the form of new data or backups.
'Data volumes are doubling approximately every two years, so scalability is extremely important to us,' said Dean Flanders, chief information officer, FMI. 'With Spectra Logic's libraries we can easily scale by simply adding frames. We know our investment is protected and that our archiving and disaster recovery infrastructure will grow with us.' To accommodate its growing storage needs, FMI selected the Spectra T950 tape library to archive data automatically from disk-based primary storage. With the solution, FMI can easily scale its storage capacity with the addition of up to seven additional frames, which would store more than 10PB of data.
After the initial implementation of the Spectra T950, FMI implemented a second T950 at a disaster recovery location. The second T950 stores an additional copy of the data from the initial T950 library. In the event of a significant incident or disaster affecting FMI's primary data centre, it is able to automatically shift from its normal disk staging to staging directly from tape at either site. The Spectra implementation has transformed FMI's disaster recovery capabilities, enabling the IT team to bring terabytes of data back online in a matter of minutes.
