Customer profile Genome sequencing inspires next-generation medical research The Wellcome Sanger Institute accelerates scientific discovery Biotechnology | United Kingdom and innovation with higher-speed, more reliable access to biomedical research data.

“Because we spend less time on storage administration,“ we have more time to support our scientists in other meaningful ways.”

Simon Binley Data Center Manager, Wellcome Genome Campus

Business needs Rapid growth of research data led the Wellcome Sanger Solutions at a glance Institute to select Dell EMC PowerScale scale-out NAS storage. Now, the institute can provide scientists with faster • Dell EMC PowerScale access to vital data, scalable storage capacities and more IT resources to support meaningful work.

Business results

• Speedier access to research data sets. • Remote scientific work enabled by faster, more efficient processing. • Reduction in storage administration time. • Assured availability of data supports timely research and innovation. • Increased storage capacity in an hour versus days.

1 “With Dell EMC PowerScale, we provide researchers with cutting-edge data sources and a fast, stable way to answer“ difficult questions about human health and disease. PowerScale enables the institute to produce scientific discoveries in a way that ultimately saves us time and resources.”

Simon Binley Data Center Manager, Wellcome Genome Campus

When scientists can probe deeply into genomic data and A game-changing service collaborate on research, the possibilities for better clinical treatments grow. By providing scientists globally with shared for remote work access to vast repositories of data and scientific knowledge, High-speed, reliable access to high-quality genomics data is the Wellcome Sanger Institute, a world-renowned genomics often critical to saving lives, as the rapid pace of COVID-19 research center, has helped advance medical research for medical technology development has shown. By enabling cancer, childhood developmental disorders and, more improved performance with Dell EMC PowerScale, Sanger has recently, COVID-19. been able to maintain a fast, dependable service for scientists.

With data assets growing quickly, Sanger sought a higher- Binley comments, “With Dell EMC PowerScale, we provide performance, more scalable solution. After evaluating several researchers with cutting-edge data sources and a fast, stable alternatives, the institute replaced its prior NetApp storage way to answer difficult questions about human health and device with Dell EMC PowerScale scale-out storage. Sanger disease. PowerScale enables the institute to produce scientific uses PowerScale to store genomic sequencing data for discoveries in a way that ultimately saves us time computational analysis. and resources.”

Simon Binley, data center manager at the Wellcome Genome Campus, says, “We chose Dell EMC PowerScale because it offers tremendous agility, speed and capacity. PowerScale helps make the vast amounts of data we generate daily available to our researchers around the world quickly and reliably.” Storage efficiency and In addition, Sanger chose CAE Technology Services as a automation free preferred partner for the project. With the best-of-breed alliance of Dell Technolgies and CAE, Sanger sought to depend on the up IT resources right team to help ensure scientific endeavors and for high-value desired outcomes. projects.

2 For example, the genomic data generated by Sanger provides vital information for researchers in fields such as cancer research, malaria and evolutionary biology.

“Dell EMC PowerScale has been a game changer because we now provide extra robustness and speed so our scientists can process data locally on their machines,” states Binley. “We value that our scientists can work remotely in a more seamless way, especially while we’re working under the challenges of COVID-19.” “Dell EMC PowerScale has been“ a game changer Reduced storage administration time because we now provide extra Binley estimates the IT team has reduced time spent on storage robustness and speed so our administration since moving to Dell EMC PowerScale. scientists can process data “We like that Dell EMC PowerScale is so simple and locally on their machines.” straightforward to manage,” Binley remarks. “When we add a node to PowerScale to increase capacity, the storage Simon Binley automatically rebalances across the new and existing nodes. Data Center Manager, As a result, scaling only takes an hour compared to a day Wellcome Genome Campus or two previously. Because we spend less time on storage administration, we have more time to support our scientists in other meaningful ways.”

A partnership aimed at scientific innovation Sanger views the partnership with Dell Technologies as critical to an ongoing transformation of data center processing.

“Partnering with Dell Technologies is important to our ability to deliver improved data center services to our scientists,” notes Binley. “We expect the partnership to continue to flourish and shape the way we support and scale science and innovation.”

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