Tina Ifremer, not a new R&B sensation but the name of Atempo’s backup software, has been utilized for 23 years by Ifremer, the French national institute dedicated to ocean science and technology. This lengthy deployment period is noteworthy, especially as organizations typically update their software every few years.
Ifremer, which stands for “Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer,” focuses on sustainable ocean resource management and collaborates with various organizations to share critical information. With a workforce of approximately 1,500, including scientists, engineers, and administrative personnel, Ifremer operates five centers in France and maintains around 20 sites globally.
As a public sector body classified as an EPIC, Ifremer primarily receives funding from government sources but also seeks external funding to meet various service requirements.
Centralising Data
Operational maintenance, infrastructure, networks, backup, and data security are managed by RIC, a third-party support provider located in northern France. This includes the upkeep of the Datarmor supercomputer, which is essential for conducting oceanic modeling that analyzes various factors such as temperature and salinity.
Since selecting Atempo as its data protection vendor in 2002, Ifremer has secured its data across numerous platforms, including bare metal servers and network-attached storage, protecting a total of 400TB of data. Backups are consolidated at a central site in Brest, France, enabling quick and efficient recovery while maintaining local site protection. Ifremer employs a 3-2-1 backup strategy, which includes off-site tape storage facilitated by a Quantum DXI disk-based appliance, optimizing backup performance and supporting data reduction.
Challenges in Data Management
Ifremer faced several challenges that influenced its decision-making process for backup solutions:
- Multisite operations, with IT infrastructure spread across the globe, complicating centralized backup management.
- Handling large volumes of data generated from extensive research activities.
- Performance issues due to the presence of numerous small files that require efficient indexing.
- Enabling self-service restores for researchers, reducing reliance on IT staff.
“We aim to safeguard Ifremer’s intellectual heritage,” noted Béatrice le Berre, a member of the Tina management team. “While we advocate for open data in science, we must be vigilant against espionage and the potential loss of critical information.” Jérôme Le Letty, another team member, emphasized the importance of temporal navigation within the Tina user interface, allowing users to retrieve accidentally deleted files, a crucial feature for their operations.
The Future: Virtual Machine Backup
At each of Ifremer’s remote locations, daily backups are conducted with data being stored on tape or disk depending on the site’s size. Weekly, these local backups are transferred to the central data center in Brest. Le Berre expressed satisfaction with the solution’s performance, noting that “Tina operates effectively across our various platforms, including Linux servers.”
Looking ahead, Ifremer plans to extend backups to include virtual servers and aims to develop a digital representation of oceanic conditions using the Datarmor supercomputer, which is currently being upgraded. The organization procures Tina through a renewable three-year license without data volume limitations, with software updates occurring biannually.