Success Story

Customer

Our client is a renowned research institution specializing in wind energy and hydrogen technologies. With a team of around 250 scientists and staff and more than 100 students at various locations, it focuses on validating technological developments in order to secure investments, shorten innovation cycles, accelerate certification processes and increase planning accuracy through innovative measurement methods. Over the years, the research facility has built a number of unique test rigs and laboratories, including facilities for systematic testing of hydrogen production methods. It works closely with leading industrial companies, from the design phase to the development of test methods and procedures.

Project Description

Our customer requires high-performance, large-volume and ultra-fast storage for acquiring ultra-high resolution multi-channel seismic data at sea. With the help of these data, they gain important information about the subsurface, structure and bottom layers, as well as the structure and formation of the seafloor. This is done by means of a multichannel seismic survey. This involves generating seismic waves that travel through the subsurface where they are reflected off the layers. The reflected waves are then recorded by an array of sensors or hydrophones (seismometers). These seismometers are connected by cables and can extend for kilometers.

The resulting measurement results provide offshore wind turbine operators with fundamental information needed for optimal and operationally reliable dimensioning of wind turbine foundations. Due to the extremely high data volumes, which increase again during the processing of the multi-channel seismic results, easy scalability of the system environment is required.

In order to meet the requirements for compactness, robustness and operational reliability, the computer systems are operated in ocean-going containers on various research vessels. Here, the 19" design with high packing density is preferred, as it allows maximum storage volume and at the same time meets the requirements for the storage media used.

Project Realization

The realization of the requirement profile took place step by step between 2020 and today. In the meantime, the system has been expanded to 17 high-performance AllFlash U.2-NVMe servers. All compute units are based on Supermicro single and dual AMD AllFlash U.2-NVMe servers in 1U and 2U/19" form factors. The U.2 NVMe storage environment relies on the Samsung PM983 and PM9A3 enterprise models and now has a high-performance U.2 AllFlash NVMe storage capacity of 1,628 TB, made up of 212 units of 7.68 TB each. Further planned expansion phases will be adapted to the respective customer requirements and always reflect the maximum possible performance densities at the time of implementation.

The Result

The customized storage system we implemented for our customer has proven to be an efficient and robust solution for the requirements of the marine technology and wind energy industries.

The high-capacity storage volume of 1,628 TB enables our customer to process and analyze extensive multichannel seismic data to gain detailed insights into the marine subsurface and seafloor structure. This information is invaluable to offshore wind farm operators, assisting them in the optimal and operationally safe sizing of their wind turbine foundations.

Future expansion phases are already being planned in order to continue to meet increasing customer requirements and to continuously optimize power density.