Case Study: MESO@LR (University of Montpellier) achieves 15PB of scalable, secure research storage with NetApp

The University of Montpellier leaps forward in its data storage and sharing abilities

The University of Montpellier’s MESO@LR platform supports a large, multidisciplinary research community within the MUSE consortium and faced rising demand for intensive processing and mass data storage across varied workflows — from code development to large‑scale analysis and sensitive medical datasets. With growing user numbers and constrained infrastructure (previous usable capacity ~1.3PB), the university needed a scalable, secure private‑cloud storage solution that could pool resources, protect data, and relieve overloaded compute cores.

NetApp, with integration partner SCC, supplied FAS systems and StorageGRID to expand MESO@LR to 15PB usable capacity (10PB primary + 5PB replication) and provide high availability, hybrid protocol support, native Snapshot-based anti-ransomware protection, and improved performance for files, objects, and blocks. The upgrade was deployed in 2021, now serves over 60,000 users, restored processing efficiency, and enables large projects (e.g., satellite imagery and coastal management initiatives) to run at scale on a secure, resilient platform.

Meso@LR

Alexandre Dehne-Garcia

INRAE Engineer