Ordnance Survey gives a boost to its digital archives

Mapping agency implements new storage system to help manage 40TB of data collected each year

Ordnance Survey, the UK national mapping agency, has chosen a combination of technology from BridgeHead Software and Plasmon to deliver a storage management system to safeguard its digital geographic archives.

Each year, Ordnance Survey collects more than 40TB of new cartographic, photographic and administrative information. But the organisation decided that its method for collecting and permanently storing this data was overly costly and unsustainable over the long term.

'We anticipate an average of over 40TB of raw data will need to be archived each year, with files of over 1GB not uncommon,' said Dave Lipsey, information systems infrastructure manager at Ordnance Survey.

'The archive solution we chose had to be capable of managing such a high volume of files of this size, for the longest time period possible. Magnetic disk and tape can’t match the media life provided by UDO, and with BridgeHead’s storage management software, we can safely archive, manage and migrate our data for ever,' said Lipsey.

Ordnance Survey estimated that its previous disk-based solution was costing in the region of £2,500 per terabyte of stored data and would likely hit physical capacity limits in a short period of time. The new system provides a long-term sustainable storage platform that has already reduced the cost of storage to just £1,200 per terabyte with a further decrease to just £600 anticipated in the future.

To address its demanding archive requirements, Ordnance Survey worked with OptoMedia to deploy a Plasmon G638 UDO library with 19TB of online storage capacity for the primary facility and a second smaller Gx24 UDO library for the disaster recovery site.

BridgeHead’s HT FileStore software was then selected for its ability to automatically classify file data and select it according to policy for inclusion in the UDO-based archives.

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