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Mapping the Highways & Byways With a Solid Infrastructure


Dell Mapping the Highways & Byways With a Solid Infrastructure

A helicopter flies through a remote forested area tracking miles of electrical transmission towers on board a NASA-invented LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) laser equipment and cameras, aimed at the ground, recording 3-D digital imagery of all surface features within the cleared corridor.

72 hours later, a power utility client receives an aerial survey alerting them to miles of encroaching vegetation endangering the transmission tower corridor - a survey that would have required days and weeks if performed on the ground. At more than 10GB per mile, the raw LiDAR survey data will be transferred to powerful Dell workstations and servers at GeoDigital International.

Profile Summary: - GeoDigital International Inc. 175 Longwood Road South, Suite 400A, Hamilton, ON L8P 0A1

Occupation: 3-D digital mapping of large-scale geophysical surfaces and terrain using LIDAR technology, for corporations, natural resource industry and government

Problem: Speed of conversion of image capture to mapping output in order to maximize workflow collaboration, as well as storage and access to large data files.

Solution: Powerful DellTM PrecisionTM workstations allied to DellTM PowerEdgeTM Servers and DellTM EqualLogicTM SAN storage, running Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional, and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 with Hyper-VTM.
GeoDigital International Inc. specializes in LiDAR-based inspection services to highway and road authorities, pipeline operators, railroads, telecommunications companies, electrical power utilities and other organizations for many critical needs, such as: fire mapping, asset mapping, field data acquisition or visual infrared vegetation management.

Heavy-duty processors make light work of 3D data

GeoDigital's 210 employees in Canada and the United States have mapped more than 500,000KM and more than 1,800,000 structures worldwide - but the heavy lifting happens after the helicopters land and the LiDAR survey information enters GeoDigital's datacentres. "We are a ‘Dell shop'," says Jessica Vreeswijk, IT Manager at GeoDigital. "We need specifically-configured workstations capable of heavy-duty processing that can handle high-speed communications with servers housing a tremendous amount of data. Since our business involves collecting and processing a lot of data, we need a production environment with both standardization and flexibility. We have been able to get that with Dell."

Our company's production centers are firmly supported by several Dell PowerEdge R610 rack servers running Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008, Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2, and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-VTM.
– Vreeswijk

Combining Storage Networks with Virtualized Servers and Desktops

Using LiDAR technology, GeoDigital can quickly produce high-resolution datasets, but the backend processing requires enterprise-class workstation, server, and data storage solutions. A mix of 120 Dell T5500 Precision workstations and Dell T3500 workstations running the Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit operating system powers GeoDigital's production centers. "We are trying to catch up on the server side," says Vreeswijk, who says the company intends to swap-out a hodgepodge of older servers from different manufacturers inherited from corporate acquisitions, and standardize on the latest new servers from Dell.



"Our company's production centers are firmly supported by several Dell PowerEdge R610 rack servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V," says Vreeswijk. Upgraded data storage is where GeoDigital heavily invested in the past year, purchasing a three Dell EqualLogic arrays giving a combined usable capacity of about 350TB in total data storage. "Dell EqualLogic arrays are very easy to deploy and maintain, and the learning curve is short for our staff," says Vreeswijk, adding that GeoDigital plans to expand data storage capacity with additional EqualLogic arrays in the future. Dell EqualLogic arrays offer ‘intuitive data availability' for tiered application workloads such as virtual desktop or applications, a compelling feature that dovetails perfectly with GeoDigital's heavy reliance on server virtualization. "Our operations currently are workstation-intensive, but that is going to change soon," says Vreeswijk. "We use Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtualization extensively, we are currently testing the Windows RDS environment for application virtualization, and we will be attempting more virtual desktop-type applications very soon."

Enabling faster growth through standards-based, scalable architectures

Dell Mapping the Highways & Byways With a Solid Infrastructure GeoDigital also plans to implement the Microsoft® Windows® 7 DirectAccess environment to support their remote users, and is considering Microsoft HPC server (High Performance Computing cluster) technology to enable remote processing. In addition to refreshing their server environment, GeoDigital is also exploring ways to manage distributed processing, especially since the physical locations of their workstations and servers stretch from Canada to the United States. "This company is small but growing fast, and the challenge is to find easy-to-implement network technologies and platforms that are easy to use and support at all of our processing sites, and offer the flexibility to scale-up with our future growth," says Vreeswijk, who say the company's relationship with their Dell technical representative has been a key element to GeoDigital's success. " "Dell has helped us decide where we want to go, what we want to do, and how we need to deliver it, says Vreeswijk. "It comes down to being able to trust that the company is going to be there to support you when you need it. When you outsource the capabilities, you have to make sure that the company is going to be there - and Dell is that company for us."

Dell Mapping the Highways & Byways With a Solid Infrastructure
Dell Mapping the Highways & Byways With a Solid Infrastructure GeoDigital GeoDigital

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