As a leading practitioner of aerial imagery and mapping, 3D modelling and airborne LiDAR surveys, Aerometrex has specific storage requirements.

The geospatial tech company needed to consolidate and expand its storage solutions to accelerate its data process and future-proof its data infrastructure as the company continues to grow.

Working with Seagate, the company found an ideal solution, to increase its storage space while decreasing rack space and consolidating processing power, enabling the business to stay ahead of the game.

Powering multimedia mapping

Aerometrex’s mission is to provide professional, accurate digital image mapping and geospatial engineering solutions to its clients by exploiting both existing and emerging air and ground imaging technologies. The company’s spatial solutions have underpinned many government and private sector projects such as infrastructure, engineering, construction, environmental and disaster management, transport and logistics, and energy and utilities.

Aerometrex products are renowned worldwide for very high standards of production quality and accuracy. The highly detailed aerial imagery requires large amounts of data that can be expensive and time consuming to store and process.

Supporting current and future data growth and throughput

Aerometrex needed better speed and larger storage to optimise its current business processes and support future growth. Since going public last year the Aerometrex has grown exponentially, requiring a storage solution which will grow with the business, in a cost-effective way.

Keeping up with the exponential data growth

Aerometrex had eight separate storage systems for different parts of the business which have been added as the business has grown organically. Having enough storage was an ongoing battle for the business. For example, last year Aerometrex captured all of Greater Sydney from the air for digital mapping with the raw data alone 300 terabytes of imagery. Or sometimes, some of its systems needs to write over 10 terabytes large sequential streaming within a short period every day. The raw data was then processed, and each one of those images distilled down into one to 60 kilobyte file. The project was made up of more than 200 million tiny files.

Seagate provided a tailored, high-performance mass data management infrastructure that allows us to continue growing our business and lowers total cost of ownership across multiple business functions

Aerometrex ICT Manager Peter Montgomery

Aerometrex needed a solution to prepare for future storage challenges, storing and processing new forms of image capture, as well as the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning and fuelling an exponential growth in data. It also needed to be able to access its data at all times and replicate data within two locations to ensure data security.

Read more about moving large data sets here.

Partnering with Seagate

Aerometrex selected Seagate because its solution provided affordable and fast mass data capacity. Aerometrex worked with Seagate to adopt a combination storage solution — consisting of flash, solid state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD) — that would bring together its eight separate storage systems. Centralising its storage enabled Aerometrex to do on-the-fly backup replication, which has saved the business from doubling the IT team.

The Seagate solution drastically improved Aerometrex’s image processing with its outstanding performance of both IOPS and sequential write throughput. For example, thanks to the speed the storage can feed data into a machine, one machine on top of the storage now takes half a day to do what previously took a week for eight servers to complete. Seagate’s solution also allowed the business to significantly consolidate its processing power, shifting its storage from scattered workstations and RAIDs into the server room for easier management.

Aerometrex selected an option that suited their specific needs with a simple licencing agreement and a configuration that the business can expand in the future.

Improved speed and reliability

Previously Aerometrex was considering building a data centre, but after consulting with Seagate, the IT team realised that its current processing power was under-utilised. The storage upgrade significantly improved processing speeds while physical rack space needs decreased. Aerometrex now has triple the amount of storage, while only using a fifth of the space of its previous set up.

Working with Seagate has reduced the amount of time it takes Aerometrex to process very large data sets by up to 95%. This improves the experience for clients and reduces the risk of the system being interrupted during the process. Fewer man hours also mean employees can work more efficiently and with less stress. The storage has had a profound effect on a number of business metrics in addition to cost and delivery.

For example, the storage has resulted in lower error or return rates and improved system availability. Also, more efficient processing has reduced overheating issues, air conditioning bill has gone down, and no data has been lost during power outages.

The data storage solution solved the issues any businesses like Aerometrex in multimedia and imaging industries may face. In addition, it is supporting Aerometrex’s future growth, allowing it to work with more clients on data-intensive projects without having to continue to add headcount to its IT. The business is able to scale and prepare for new forms of image capture and data analytics in a cost-effective manner.

Products used

● Nytro 2U24 with extreme performance to shorten data upload to meet limited time window.

● Fibre Channel protocol to reduce data overhead

● ADAPT technology provides fast rebuild to secure performance during rebuild

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For more information on Data Storage Systems visit the Seagate website.