Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research Secures Data

Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), part of the Novartis Research Foundation, has implemented a COPAN Systems based solution to provide a scalable and secure storage solution to meet the data storage demands of this premier research institute.

The Friedrich Miescher Institute, located in Basel, Switzerland, has a strong record of innovation in the molecular biology of disease. Researching, developing, testing and delivering these medical breakthroughs require generating, analyzing and retaining huge quantities of data. This critical data is not necessarily accessed regularly but must be kept instantly available at all times for crucial analysis.

A large proportion of FMI’s life science data is generated from microscopy, but new projects led the FMI to seek a storage solution to support a wider range of data. A single new piece of laboratory equipment can radically alter the organizations storage needs. For example, two new Illumina Genome Analyzers are each capable of producing up to two terabytes of data per week.

In this environment, FMI sought a cost-effective solution for backing up and restoring multi-terabyte file systems while coping with limited power, cooling and space resources. FMI needed to innovate beyond a traditional file server system which leaves too much persistent data on expensive tier one storage, straining existing infrastructure. A traditional HSM system was out of the question since the high volume and file size of FMI’s life science data meant a tape system would present slow access rates, data integrity issues and no online access. FMI was also concerned about pressure on space, power and cooling resources as their data production grows and their system scales.

To meet these challenges, FMI selected COPAN Systems disk-based Virtual Tape Library, providing fast access times with the security and reliability of disk. The new highly scalable tiered file system has almost no impact to the existing cooling and power infrastructure. By migrating persistent data to the new COPAN System solution, FMI frees up more expensive tier one storage for its original purpose – modifying and storing quickly changing transactional data.

Some of the key benefits of the new system for FMI are:

• Scalability: The system currently holds 40 terabytes of data but can scale in one rack to 896 terabytes without redesigning or changing cooling requirements.
• Simplicity: By writing a file to FMI’s HSM file system within a defined period of time, the file can be automatically copied to the COPAN Systems MAID platform and another copy created to tape in a remote location as required.
• Efficiency: COPAN Systems ultra-dense disk configurations are enhanced using Enterprise MAID technology. COPAN Systems powers off disks that have no outstanding IO requests, thus reducing power consumption by around 85 percent.

"No other company on the market could match the COPAN Systems solution in such a demanding environment as ours," said Dean Flanders, Head of Informatics, FMI. "Our competitive review found that no other system could provide this kind of high performance, scalability and cost effectiveness to meet our persistent data needs. This means we can provide fast access to a vast amount of data in a very small footprint."