The European Space Agency has developed a “flexible and reliable” private cloud infrastructure, called ESA Cloud, which offers advanced IT services for its user communities. ESA Cloud, which partially uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is based on VCE systems, on a blade x86 architecture. It is managed entirely by Orange Business Services.
The ESA IT department hosts a variety of services and environments in the ESA cloud, including software development and testing environments, satellite data reprocessing environments, document management systems, and traditional corporate IT services used by the different teams in their day-to-day operations.
The complex virtual environments can now be provisioned within minutes directly by the end users as opposed to months. This agility allows ESA to reach business and scientific targets earlier.
ESA Cloud was first implemented at Frascati and a similar site is being completed at Darmstadt, Germany. The new site delivers analogous services and allows geographic disaster recovery to overcome any possible large-scale calamity. ESA is also working to increase the number of services available in the cloud to its users.
“The European Space Agency has a very unique set of requirements, which are difficult to be matched by any other organization in the world. Specifically, the technology platforms they choose need to be highly reliable and flexible, as well as consistently delivering excellent performance,” Gianni Anguilletti, country manager of Red Hat Italy, said in a statement.
Ajith Kumar S
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