Case Study: DLR (German Aerospace Center) achieves scalable, high-performance storage and protection of millions of HD satellite images with Scality RING

German Aerospace Center Stores and Protects Millions of High-Definition Satellite Images on the Scality RING

DLR (the German Aerospace Center) faced an exploding archive of remote‑sensing data in its Photogrammetry and Image Analysis department—starting with six million files (many over 1 TB) and growing by multiple terabytes per mission—while up to 40 engineers needed simultaneous, high‑performance access. The limits and fragmentation of existing servers and NAS systems prevented parallel processing, scalable capacity and reliable backups, so DLR selected Scality’s RING storage solution to meet its demanding file, performance and remote‑access requirements.

Scality deployed the Scality RING on commodity Dell hardware (current configuration ~400 TB on Dell R550 nodes), providing a parallel, highly resilient and natively scalable storage layer with file and object connectors for HTTP access and direct workstation I/O. The Scality solution eliminated DLR’s NAS bottlenecks and backup headaches, enabled massive parallel access from 40+ clients, automatic replication and seamless expansion, and made it possible to store and process millions of high‑definition satellite images (supporting terabytes per mission) — even enabling new uses such as the high‑quality 3D Karakoram models used by climbers.

DLR