END USER INSIGHT
costs, means greater funding is available
for key scientific research. Cooling is a
major point of focus when addressing
operating efficiency.
Solution – An upgrade delivered
Solution – An upgrade delivered
via
partnership
via
partnership
As part of its ongoing demand for
greater processing power, Sanger made
operational a fourth data hall within its
existing data centre facility. Comprising
more than 400 racks and consuming
4MW of power, the institute is now
the largest genomic research data
centre in Europe.
THE MORE
PROCESSING
POWER YOU HAVE
THE GREATER
THE SCIENTIFIC
CAPABILITY.
trends point towards the requirement for
greater IT capability; the more processing
power you have the greater the scientific
capability. Every year, the sequencers
generate data more quickly as the
technology improves. IT has to keep up
with that demand.”
By way of illustration of the pace of
change, as part of an international effort,
Sanger took 13 years to map the first
human genome. Today, the same task can
be achieved in less than an hour.
“The human body is made up of trillions
of cells,” said Binley. “As we sequence
those cells we will also be gathering more
genomic data via a greater number of
sequencing machines. Advances in today’s
technology also mean we are gathering
data more quickly than ever before. This
requires more power availability, greater
storage, faster connectivity and higher
levels of local compute.”
48
Issue 13
This requirement for local processing to
be physically close to the sequencing
equipment where data is being generated
is an archetypal example of an Edge
Computing deployment. “Proximity to
the sequencing equipment is a primary
consideration for the data centre,” said
Binley. “The bandwidth and latency
requirements for the high volume and
velocity of genomic data makes cloud
services unsuitable. As such, no other
Edge data centre is as important to
discoveries about human life as the
one at Sanger.”
Another key consideration is the DNA
sequencing equipment on which the
scientific effort depends, which must be
protected by uninterruptible power supply
(UPS) systems at all times. Downtime
within this distributed IT environment
would require the chemicals used in
the research process to be replaced at
significant cost, in addition to lost time
and data. Ongoing monitoring of UPS
battery health is therefore essential to
ensure runtime is available and makes a
major contribution towards the Wellcome
Sanger Institute avoiding outages in both
the data sequencing and research efforts.
Operational efficiency is the remaining
key concern for Binley and the data
centre. Any money saved on IT and
physical infrastructure, either in terms of
capital expenditure (CapEx) or operating
Additionally, the DNA sequencing
equipment on which the scientific
effort depends are protected by
individual APC by Schneider Electric
Smart-UPS uninterruptible power supply
(UPS) systems. Ensuring resiliency
within this distributed IT environment
is essential, ensuring that the institute
avoids outages and any losses of
sequencing or research data.
As part of the upgrade, Sanger worked
directly with EfficiencyIT (EiT), a
specialist in data centre design and build,
and UK Elite Partner to Schneider Electric.
Having worked closely with the institute
for years, while forming a long-term,
strategic partnership with Schneider
Electric, EiT was able to recommend
the best course of action in terms of
monitoring for this data-driven and
distributed IT environment, ensuring that
its scientific research would continue
without interruption from downtime or
from unexpected outages.
EiT specified Schneider Electric
EcoStruxure IT Expert is a cloud-based
Data Centre Infrastructure Management
(DCIM) software platform, which
enables the user to manage all of the key
infrastructure assets and improve the
overall efficiency of the data centre.
Installed by EiT’s software experts, the
solution provides the Wellcome Sanger
Institute with insight into the operation
of all key infrastructure assets in the
data centre, including APC by Schneider
www.intelligentdatacentres.com