Case Study: National Snow and Ice Data Center processes 200 TB of glacier data for $150 with Coiled

How the National Snow and Ice Data Center processed 200 TB of data for $150

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), a NASA data center, faced the challenge of processing massive satellite datasets for climate research. Their scientific users lacked cloud computing expertise, creating a barrier to analyzing over 6 petabytes of data. They turned to Coiled and its cloud orchestration service to bridge this gap and simplify access to computational power for their researchers.

Using Coiled, a software engineer provisioned clusters and ran a distributed batch processing job with a single line of Python code. The solution processed 200 terabytes of glacier velocity data in less than a day for approximately $150. This cost-effective result from Coiled accelerated scientific research, removed financial uncertainty, and enabled scientists to ask bigger questions without becoming cloud experts.

National Snow and Ice Data Center

Luis Lopez

Software Engineer