The Wellcome Sanger Institute, a global centre of excellence for genomic research, leads the scientific advancement of areas such as cancer, infectious diseases and cellular genetics. With a need to collaborate and share data with other centres around the world, The Institute has to store, process and share vast amounts of data.

Following a move to an OpenStack private cloud to complement their existing batch computing infrastructure, The Institute initially opted for self-maintained Ceph storage. As capacity needs grew from 3 PB to over 20 PB, The Institute turned to Canonical for high-level Ceph support providing direct access to Canonical’s engineering teams to resolve the more complex issues.

Utilising a reliable Ceph storage has enabled The Institute to reduce the barriers for scientists and ensure their time is focused on the research itself.