CASE STUDY
from Gambia running analysis on the system
and we had teams uploading sequencing
data to OpenStack and Ceph during the
Ebola outbreak in Africa. This is a large-scale
remote resource that we can ship data to,
from anywhere,” said Connor.
Swansea University makes up one of the
key research institutes in CLIMB. We caught
up with Simon Thompson, Head of IT at
Swansea University, to find out more about
the solution and some of its key benefits:
The CLIMB collaborative initiative –
providing a secure platform for users
We chose the Red Hat technology based
on the fact that it was open source and
therefore we always had the open source
ethos and technology to fall back on if we
needed to. Additionally, it’s such a critical
role we’re running now, we need to think
about getting professional support. We
brought in Red Hat for its knowledge, but
also the way that it is amenable and able to
listen to us and support the goals we set.
high performance,” said Connor. “We can use
it to store copies of images on our system so
that other researchers can download and use
them. The features of Red Hat Ceph Storage
let us share these large volumes efficiently.
We’re confident that we have the storage
volume we need to keep up with future
generations of research data.” The project is
also able to expand globally and experience
easier collaboration. “We’ve had researchers
I think it’s about serving our community;
the microbiologists. Traditionally, servers at
universities were not well maintained – it
was a case of putting a server under a desk
and kicking it occasionally – nor were they
patched. By providing an environment
where more rigorous enterprise practices
are applied by staff, researchers can focus
on updating the machine with insurance
and apps and ensuring the package
management is the latest version. Then
there’s the physical security of being in
proper data centres in universities and the
resilience of being managed by proper
dedicated hardware and software teams.
Keeping the solution up to date and
THE FACT THAT 100% OF THE
MICROBIAL GENOMICS ACADEMIC
COMMUNITY ACROSS THE UK HAS
ADOPTED THIS TECHNOLOGY REALLY IS
A TESTAMENT TO ITS IMPORTANCE.
www.intelligentcio.com
managed by physical data centres means
it’s inherently more secure.
Scalability of the solution
Both OpenStack and Red Hat Ceph Storage
are horizontally scalable and it is simply a
matter of turning on additional resources
to scale it. It scales in a very predictable
manner which gives us peace of mind as we
aren’t ever hit with unexpected costs.
Other areas of progression the
solution enables
It has definitely enabled the science to
progress. I think it’s the unhindered access to
an enterprise-grade piece of IT architecture
that makes a huge difference. This group
of researchers across multiple universities
has free access to this flexibility, power and
knowledge sharing which means they can
focus on writing grants and on the delivery
of the actual science without worrying about
IT. There’s the knowledge that it’ll be there
when they need it and we’ll scale it to fit
whatever demands we have at the time. The
fact that 100% of the microbial genomics
academic community across the UK has
adopted this technology really is a testament
to its importance.
Recommending Red Hat as a vendor
I would recommend Red Hat as a vendor.
When things get mission-critical, we
obviously had on-prem staff do it, learning
the products and supporting it, but as
it becomes more popular the impact
on people’s research becomes quite
significant. Receiving a strong level of
support with a company like Red Hat who
understands the product inside out is really
invaluable. It is also because Red Hat is
a major contributor to the source code,
so it knows about any strange issues you
may be experiencing and can work on a
resolution quickly.
We’ve only had to contact Red Hat twice,
but the team has turned it around escalated
and it to staff where necessary. Red Hat
really understood the problem and was
able to direct my engineers to a resolution
very quickly. It’s this great collaborative
experience where Red Hat support us with
any IT project which we want to undertake.
We can’t wait to continue with the vendor. n
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