Wellcome Trust preserves digital archive

The Wellcome Trust is to install new storage systems to manage its entire network file and data shares.

The charity has bought a Pillar Axiom storage area network (SAN) with replication capability to digitally preserve more than 250,000 images, from over 70 years of medical research.

"Preserving the contents of the library is vital to ensure we are able to continuously drive innovation in medical research," said Mark Bramwell, head of systems development at The Wellcome Trust.

The system will enable the charity to expand the storage system without needing to take it offline, while providing transparent access to network files and medical images.

Once the Pillar Data system is installed, the trust is looking to reduce its dependency on tape-based backup by mirroring data over the wide area network (WAN) to a remote site. This will enable it to make use of off-peak bandwidth availability to perform the replication, while also facilitating reduced power, space and cooling overheads.

"This means we no longer need multiple storage products and makes managing capacity simpler whilst knowing that the total cost of ownership takes away the headache of budgeting in coming years," Bramwell said.

As the UK's largest charity, The Wellcome Trust funds innovative biomedical UK and international research to the tune of around £500 million each year.

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