Located in Torrejón de Ardoz, in the vicinity of Madrid, Spain, the European Union Satellite Centre (EUSatCen), commonly known as SatCen, is an agency of the European Union's Council of Ministers which gathers information through satellite images.Facing an annual growth of geospatial data of over 30%, the EU SatCenselectedQuantum StorNext 5 storage systems to manage and archive its mission-critical data for the long-term.
Specialized in humanitarian aid missions and peacekeeping missions such as recovery from natural disaster or evacuation operations, SatCen is well-known for its expertise in GEOspatialINTelligence, which is a discipline that comprises the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. On a daily basis, SatCen acquires high resolution satellite images from different providers (Spot Image, Ikonos, Skymed) . These images, ranging from 350Mb to several gigabytes each, are then processed by the agency’s experts using leading GIS applications like ArcGis, Erdas or PCI, before being delivered to customers for further exploitation and analysis.
"On a typical day, we order 4 new satellite images from different sources which are then analyzed and processed by our team. With higher and higher resolution images,as well as the introduction of video formats, it was crucial for SatCen to deploy a powerful and scalable solution to manage and archive the geospatial data we acquire and process on a daily basis. This is why we turned to StorNext 5 and its best of breed storage tiering capabilities to preserve the critical content for long-term preservation and future re-use," said Romuald Sureau, IT Backup & archive Administrator, SatCen.
SatCen worked with Prosol, a Spanish-based Quantum certified Goldreseller, to design a robust and scalable infrastructure including the newly released StorNext 5, along with an M441 metadata applianceand its StorNextQX1200 Q-Series storage with 100 TB of usable capacity. Thanks to StorNext Storage Manager, the processed satellite images are automatically stored on a Quantum AEL500 LTO-6 tape library in 2 copies, one remaining in the tape library for long term preservation and future reuse, the other vaulted off-site for disaster recovery purposes.
StorNext® 5’s reliable and proven high-performance technology is found at the center of some of the most demanding workflows in the geospatial world. StorNext specializes in large files—up to 5 billion of these large files per StorNext cluster—and with its high-speed capture, StorNext has become an integral part of high-performance GIS workflows
About the EUSatCen
The EU Satellite Centre supports the decision making of the European Union by providing geospatial intelligence products and services in the context of the Common Foreign and Security Policy and, in particular, the Common Security and Defence Policy, primarily through the analysis of data from Earth observation satellites.
Under the supervision of the Political and Security Committee and the operational direction of the High Representative of the Union, the EU SatCen is a decentralised agency of the EU that responds to requests from different users: the European External Action Service (EEAS), Member States, the European Commission, Third States(1) and international organisations such as the UN or NATO.
The Centre provides early warning of potential crises to decision makers in order to enable timely, diplomatic, economic and humanitarian measures, including generic planning for intervention.
(1) Third States are non-EU NATO members and other countries which are candidates for accession to the EU.
About Quantum
Quantum is a leading expert in scale-out storage, archive and data protection. Its StorNext 5 solutions power modern workflows, enabling high-performance, real-time collaboration and keeping content readily accessible for future use and re-monetization. More than 100,000 customers have trusted Quantum to address their most demanding content workflow needs, including top studios, major broadcasters and new, cutting-edge content creators. With Quantum, customers can Be Certain™ they have the end-to-end storage platform to manage assets from ingest through finishing, and into delivery and long-term preservation. See how at www.stornext.com.