The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and prevention has chosen Pittsburgh-based Avere Systems, to assist in expanding data center performance and capacity for the CDC’s new genomic sequencing environment. The CDC has chosen the data storage specialist’s FXT 3850 Edge filers for data center management on the project.

The new partnership will support the CDC's Office of Infectious Diseases (OID) and its mission to lead, promote and facilitate science, programs and policies to reduce the burden of infectious diseases in the US and across the globe. The OID is led by Dr. Rima Khabbaz, who serves as the CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases and as the director of OID.

The CDC found that it required an additional 3.5 petabyte of usable storage and a solution that would improve performance and data transfer between campus systems while maintaining ease of use for its research scientists. This was after taking previous steps to improve its high-performance computing environment and instruments. Additionally, according to a statement, the CDC required that future expansion of its data center would easily be accommodated.

"When Avere heard what the CDC required for its data center strategy and to support the next generation of genomic sequencing platforms, we knew that Avere FXT Edge filers would be the ideal fit," said Ron Bianchini, president and CEO of Avere Systems, in a press release statement. "We offer the performance, scale and manageability required to empower the CDC to focus on its life-saving mission, rather than worry about the backend infrastructure keeping up."

The CDC’s next-generation sequencing environment will be driven by Avere FXT 3850 Edge filers with FlashMove and FlashMirror. According to a company statement, “both FlashMove and FlashMirror make managing the data center easy and reliable…[as] FlashMove migrates live data simply and non-disruptively between multiple sources ,including NAS filers, private and/or public clouds. FlashMirror replicates the data between the sources and…if the primary storage filer goes offline, the secondary source is utilized without slowing down productivity for users.”