VAST Data accelerates CeGaT Genetic Data Analytics

VAST Data has been selected by CeGaT to accelerate time-to-insight for genetic analytics essential to diagnostic healthcare, genetic research and pharmaceutical discovery. VAST’s high-capacity all-flash data platform replaces CeGaT's legacy hard-drive-based solutions, which constrained the company's genome sequencing application pipeline due to scale and performance limitations.  

Genome sequencing and genetic data analysis are crucial to discovering biomarkers that help doctors and scientists understand how specific diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, are formed. As genetics has evolved from the laboratory into diagnostic environments, these tools can now facilitate clinical decision-making to assist with advanced patient illness detection and make personalized medicine possible. Clinical genetics has enhanced patient care and is now an instrumental component of disease prevention and specialized targeted treatment. Since 2009, CeGaT has been helping doctors and patients find the genetic causes of rare diseases.   

Today, each of CeGaT’s genome sequencers generates up to five terabytes (TB) of data.This data must be collected, analyzed and interpreted quickly and accurately. When CeGaT recognized that its existing hybrid flash + HDD storage system couldn't keep up with growing demands for speed, volume and scalability, the company turned to VAST Data’s Universal Storage data platform. VAST’s Disaggregated and Shared Everything (DASE) architecture is a revolutionary leap in system scale, performance and resiliency. It brings the simplicity needed to support any scale of genomic data discovery, laying the foundation for the future of CeGaT’s ambitious growth strategy. 

Since deploying VAST, CeGaT’s ability to process genomic data through its pipeline has accelerated significantly, resulting in new computer hardware efficiency, savings and improvement to CeGaT’s overall business agility. 

“To support our scientific and healthcare agenda,we’re constantly pioneering new ways to extract new insights from larger and larger datasets,” said Tim Scheurenbrand, IT director at CeGaT. “When we began our search for new data infrastructure, we decided that our mission-critical business would not compromise on scale or uptime. VAST Data’s Universal Storage is an always-on platform that can easily scale with our data program. The system is fast, too. The improvement to our pipeline allows us to take on more work within the same infrastructure envelope, saving us money while also driving science forward and furthering data-intensive methods of scientific discovery.” 

CeGaT can realise the vision of an all-flash data center, without incurring exorbitant all-flash storage costs. Universal Storage combines the high performance, low-latency and capacity of hyperscale all-flash storage with novel storage efficiency algorithms to make all-flash infrastructure affordable for ever-increasing datasets. “We chose VAST because the Universal Storage concept completely won us over,” added Scheurenbrand. “With VAST we get a highly performant all-flash system for the price of a less powerful hybrid storage system.” 

“CeGaT is committed to pushing the scientific boundaries of gene diagnostics, helping healthcare providers find the fastest path to patient therapy. With CeGaT, we are able to showcase the distinctive performance capabilities of our architecture and contribute to life-changing research. Ultimately, it’s about using technology for faster detection, prevention and personalised treatment plans, all in the pursuit of creating a healthier world. And that is a powerful reminder of why we do what we do,” said Peter Gadd, Vice President, International at VAST Data.