Data Management
Quantum Spatial Manages Massive Data Growth with Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct
Overview
Quantum Spatial is North America’s largest and most capable geospatial services firm, providing geographic insights to the largest government and corporate organizations that need geospatial intelligence to mitigate risk, plan for growth, better manage resources, and advance scientific understanding. A pioneer in advanced mapping technology, Quantum Spatial’s end-to-end solutions and services deliver the industry’s highest data quality and accuracy, while leveraging the widest array of technologies for analyzing all types of project challenges.
“We move a lot of data around, as much as a few petabytes each month as we offload and process data,” said Carl Lucas, VP of Information Technology at Quantum Spatial. “The amount of data that we get per flight from our sensor, platform, and satellite technologies is exploding. And image processing creates even more data, often 3 to 10 times the original flight,” said Travis Spurley, Senior Systems Engineer.
Quantum Spatial did not have an effective data management strategy for their unstructured data spread across three primary sites of Isilon and Dell EMC Unity hardware, plus 4 more remote locations. “As the only person managing petabytes of data across multiple sites, the risk was too high” said Spurley.
We’re a technology company. We invest heavily into the systems that enable us to provide the right products and services to our customer base in a timely manner.
Carl Lucas
VP of Information Technology![]()
Challenges
Inadequate data management strategy and insufficient datacenter space
Backup and recovery was handled by their own homegrown backup systems, prosumer devices, tape backup, and external drives—but the systems did not work together and took way too much time to manage. “It was all over the place,” said Lucas. Quantum Spatial was having problems hitting SLAs for backup, and they were running out of primary NAS storage. Customer contracts had data retention obligations, but their users were hesitant to archive older data for fear of not being able to get it back. And through all of this, the data kept coming in fast.
With their limited datacenter space, Quantum Spatial knew they needed to incorporate cloud storage into their data strategy. They needed a backup platform that could keep up with their growing data footprint, and they needed a well-defined archive workflow that could quickly move all their old data to and from the cloud.
“We needed an enterprise-class solution. We needed it to be easy to manage, scalable across multiple NAS platforms, cloud-friendly, and we needed it to perform,” said Lucas.
We move a lot of data around, as much as a few petabytes each month as we offload and process data. We needed an enterprise-class solution. We needed it to be easy to manage, scalable across multiple NAS platforms, cloud-friendly, and we needed it to perform.
Carl Lucas
VP of Information Technology![]()
Solutions
Rubrik NAS cloud direct for SAAS backup, archive, and visibility
Since their systems were expanding or already full, in order to reduce capacity, they needed the ability to consistently archive data. With Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct, they are able to quickly archive data to the cloud, free up primary NAS for new projects, and retrieve data when it’s needed.
Initially, the Quantum Spatial team was “shocked” at how fast NAS Cloud Direct’s search functioned. During one meeting, the team could not believe it when they were able to search and find a specific file name across a petabyte worth of data in just seconds.
Based on their early success with NAS Cloud Direct for backup and archive, Quantum Spatial was confident NAS Cloud Direct could also solve their visibility problem. They were finally able to see and understand their entire unstructured data footprint.
Better data visibility for Quantum Spatial ensures their most critical assets are always protected in a business where data loss would be catastrophic. This has built trust between IT and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists behind their amazing data analysis. Data stakeholders can now confidently search and retrieve their projects according to agreed upon SLAs, which allows IT to confidently archive more data.
“We’re a technology company. We invest heavily into the systems that enable us to provide the right products and services to our customer base in a timely manner. Primarily, we’re investing in technologies that help us manage the massive data flow through our systems. NAS Cloud Direct provides that security blanket with visibility, backup and recovery,” said Lucas.
Simplified operations, data center efficiency while hitting slas
As a single vendor for visibility, backup, and archive, NAS Cloud Direct provides resilient software with the ability to hit aggressive protection and compliance SLAs. For Quantum Spatial, that means scalable, fast, and enterprise-class backup and archive to Azure for petabytes of data.
The NAS Cloud Direct systems are operationally efficient, managed by just one person at Quantum Spatial. And since it’s software, delivered as-a-service, they never have to worry about upgrading or new feature integrations. “NAS Cloud Direct monitors the system and lets me know if anything is happening. It helps me sleep at night,” said Spurley.
Quantum Spatial is no longer running out of space. IT can now archive data to free up primary NAS for new projects and retrieve it quickly when needed again. Some users describe this unique NAS Cloud Direct differentiator as temporary storage or a “pressure release mechanism” across their multiple locations and cloud.
“My engineers are very happy with NAS Cloud Direct. The ability to search across millions, if not billions of files is huge. The Rubrik solution definitely improved our ability to do our job”, said Lucas. NAS Cloud Direct even enabled Quantum Spatial to keep an additional ‘highly space constrained’ office up and running that otherwise would need to be replaced by a larger and much more expensive datacenter. “It was infinitely valuable having raw capacity available in Azure that we could utilize. NAS Cloud Direct saved the day, “ said Spurley
NAS Cloud Direct monitors the system and lets me know if anything is happening. It helps me sleep at night.
Carl Lucas
VP of Information Technology![]()
The Results
Quantum Spatial's collaboration with Rubrik yielded unanimously favorable impacts. Benefits include:
Simple and manageable data movement
Cost and operational simplification
