Accelerate: Genomics Research - The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Relies on Scalable, HighPerformance Storage from DDN® to Reduce Global Health Burden
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- Europe
Country
- United Kingdom
Product
- DDN SFA® high-performance storage engine
- EXAScaler™ Lustre® fi le system appliance
- iRODS
Tech Stack
- High-performance computing
- Scalable storage architectures
- Data management systems
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Innovation Output
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
- Life Sciences
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a charitably funded genomic research center located in the United Kingdom. It is a world leader in studying the impact of genetics and genomics on global health. Since its inception in 1993, Sanger Institute has developed new understanding of genomes and their role in biology while delivering some of the most important advances in genomic research. The organization played a pivotal role in the Human Genome Project (HGP), an international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings. Sanger Institute also led the research on the fi rst human chromosome and ultimately contributed one-third of the human genome to help the project reach its goals by April 2003. Over the years, the Institute’s work has led to other major contributions that have helped reduce the global health burden and lay the foundation for new diagnostics and therapeutics.
The Challenge
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a genomic research center, was facing challenges in managing the surge in data volume and computational analysis due to major sequencing technology advancements. The institute's diverse research community, encompassing over 2,000 scientists worldwide, required a robust IT infrastructure with large-scale, high-throughput performance. The unpredictable data growth made it difficult to scale storage sufficiently without overburdening the Institute’s existing 10-GigE network infrastructure or encroaching beyond its one petabyte per floor tile rule in the space-constrained data center. The institute developed a classic “Big Data” problem that was further exacerbated whenever new advances in sequencer technology produced more sequencing data faster than ever before.
The Solution
The Sanger Institute chose DDN's SFA® high-performance storage engine, EXAScaler™ Lustre® file system appliance, and iRODS to address their data management challenges. DDN's solution was chosen for its superior Lustre solution, end-to-end technical expertise on all aspects of high-performance computing and scalable storage architectures, and its ability to deliver unprecedented levels of throughput and scalability. The Institute tested the hardware and servers, ran codes on the platform, and got to know the DDN team that would potentially support them going forward. After installing its initial SFA10K storage platforms powering EXAScalerTM parallel file systems running Lustre, the Institute could easily keep pace with ever-evolving computational and analysis demands. The team also took advantage of DDN’s technology advancements to double initial performance from 3GB/s to 6GB/s, then grew to 10GB/s before a significant increase to 20GB/s.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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