Case Study: Population Health Research Institute achieves 60% lower operational costs and up to 20× faster genomics throughput with Brocade

Population Health Research Institute - Customer Case Study

Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) is a Canada‑based global health research center running massive clinical trials and population studies across 86 countries, with more than a million participants and a biobank of 2.5 million samples. Faced with billions of data points, 10–20 million pages of incoming data per year, and a campus/global user base that strained an outsourced 1 Gb/10 Gb network, PHRI needed to bring networking in‑house, scale for high availability and Big Data workloads (especially genomics), and prepare for software‑defined networking.

PHRI deployed a Brocade solution—VDX 8770 core switches, VDX 6740 top‑of‑rack, ICX 6450 access switches, and Brocade Network Advisor—implemented with Scalar and migrated with minimal disruption. The unified VCS fabric simplified management to a single pane, increased bandwidth (up to 20x throughput for genomics), shifted port mix to more 10/40 GbE, eliminated unplanned downtime, reduced annual operational costs by ~60%, and established a platform for SDN and robust disaster recovery.

Population Health Research Institute

Darryl Gamble

Senior ICT Architect