Advanced Workflow Solution Will Support Next Decade of Geospatial Data Growth for Service Provider

ACRI-ST, a service provider in remote sensing and modeling of physical and environmental phenomena, has selected and deployed a Quantum StorNext 5 scale-out storage system to enable content collaboration and preservation for 400 TB of geospatial data today and 7 PB of data over the next 10 years.

Headquartered in Sophia Antipolis, France, ACRI-ST works closely with the European Space Agency, the European Union (including EUMETSAT), the French Space Agency and other national space agencies. The company offers satellite mission solutions, including simulations and environmental forecast prototyping, and operates environmental data centers that provide vital decision-making support to public agencies and local authorities.

The European Space Agency recently selected ACRI-ST to host and operate the Sentinel-3 Processing and Archiving Centre. The main objective of Sentinel-3 is to measure sea-surface topography, sea- and land-surface temperature and ocean- and land-surface optical radiometry with high accuracy and reliability -- all in support of ocean forecasting systems and environmental and climate monitoring.

Anticipating the large volume of data the Sentinel-3 project will generate over the next decade, ACRI-ST worked with Computacenter, a Quantum certified reseller, to design a robust and scalable storage infrastructure that could accommodate the workflow demands this entailed. The solution included a StorNext M441 metadata appliance and StorNext QX-1200 disk storage for storing and managing geospatial content. In addition, ACRI-ST deployed a StorNext AEL6000 Archive tape library for longer term retention and access, enabling the company to reduce the total cost of ownership through StorNext 5's intelligent policy-based migration and storage tiering of processed satellite images and other datasets. The system provides transparent file system access to all data tiered to tape and offers best-in-class data integrity for long-term preservation at the lowest possible cost.

With StorNext, ACRI-ST will benefit from highly reliable and proven high-performance technology at the core of some of the most demanding workflows in the geospatial world. StorNext is designed to handle up to five billion large files per StorNext cluster and, with its fast capture capabilities, has become an integral part of high-performance Geographic Information Systems workflows.

Gilbert Barrot, CIO, ACRI-ST: "Providing quick and collaborative access to the various datasets for our users while also cost effectively protecting and preserving this precious scientific content for frequent re-use over time is crucial for our business. Quantum's StorNext 5 was a natural choice for us to maintain secure, fast access to the new data and preserve this content for mankind in the decades to come."

Robert Clark, Senior Vice President, Product Operations, Quantum: "ACRI-ST shows how innovators in geospatial technology are increasingly relying on scale-out storage management and archive capabilities to protect and access their data, and Quantum's StorNext 5 is emerging as the leading platform for complex information workflows. StorNext plays a key role in making creative applications for geospatial data come to life, with use cases for global collaboration, geospatial archive and full motion imagery."