Ordnance Surveyhasreduced the amount of power consumed by its digital mapping
database projectby 38% through the implementation
ofstorage management
software.
The national mapping agency has been using
BridgeHead Software's automated policy-based archiving product,
HT Filestore, since March last year and has automated the
migration of large volumes of data from disc to storage systems to
removable media, which draws no power.
Moving data from disc to media that is powered down except when
accessed reduces the power consumption as well as hardware and
management costs.
The energy savings fit into the organisation's environmental
policy that requires it to
manage energy usage wisely in all its operations and to
integrate environmental management in its business activities.
Ordnance Survey is heavily reliant on storage as it creates a
geographic database.
This involves taking millions of high-definition aerial
photographs every year, with each raw image file being about
700Mbytes. These have to be stored and retained for an indefinate
length of time.
"We collect more than 40 terabytes of photographic data every
flying season, and we were placing all our digital mapping data on
Sata disc-based storage arrays," said Dave Lipsey, information
systems infrastructure manager at Ordnance Survey.
"But this quickly became impractical and costly because of the
difficulties of backing up and managing such huge data volumes on
disc. It was also energy inefficient and environmentally unsound,
and if we had continued to add new arrays at the rate we were doing
we would have had to update our power supply and heat-removal
systems in the near future. Not to mention the impact on space
within our internal datacentre."
Lipsey said 91% of the organisation's revenue is generated from
its data. "So we are very sensitive about its longevity, value and
currency," he said.