Geospatial Data Hosting
Infoterra runs the largest commercial geospatial hosting centre in Europe.
The facility includes a number of features that make it especially resilient and suitable for hosting geo-data services reliably. Infoterra has recently upgraded the infrastructure by implementing a SAN storage device, near-line backup robotics (capable of restoring 10TB of data in 8 hours) and gas fire suppressant (in addition to the existing back up power generator, flood detection and dedicated operational staff). These measures not only make an incident likely to affect the service less likely, but also speed up recovery from any unforeseen events. Infoterra uses high quality, high volume, Internet Service Providers.
The hosting and serving systems have been designed to optimise performance and minimise downtime through high availability architecture, for example use of multiple production, image and web servers. Infoterra uses proven, mature technology. The company’s hosting solutions go through rigorous testing to ensure their reliability, components are not released into production environments without first successfully completing a comprehensive set of FAT (Factory Acceptance Testing), SAT (Site Acceptance Testing) and UAT (User Acceptance Testing), in addition to the normal testing and debugging of components during development. All development and testing take place under segregated development and test environments.
Infoterra uses a range of off-the-shelf and bespoke tools, for monitoring the online services it provides. Where appropriate, the end-to-end service is monitored from outside of Infoterra’s own network – this provides the best possible assurance of the health of a system. Users may receive quarterly reports showing the availability statistics for their services including a statement of performance against service levels. Infoterra monitors current industry best practice and ensures that all its procedures conform with it, where appropriate.
Data hosting and serving solutions are supplied as follows:
- Access to Infoterra data (such as aerial photography, Lidar, etc.) served using WMS and streamed directly into the client application. For example, the client can open an ESRI application and call the aerial photography background into their PC. On top they can portray mapping or any other geo-information and proceed to undertake analysis.
- Access to 3rd party data such as national mapping, geology etc. served through WMS or WFS streamed directly into a client application. The client can take all of their main geospatial layers as a managed service thus cutting out the need to hold the data locally reducing staff, system and internal bandwidth costs.
- Access to a client's own data, stored at the Infoterra secure hosting facility and then served back into the organisation. Often the client's own geospatial team is unable to support their user community with the range of services required. A simple outsourcing model guarantees the access to the data layers on a per requirements basis, irrespective of where the data is needed in an organisation.
A range of services are available to facilitate access to geospatial information on an "as required" basis, predominantly across the web. The datasets are accessed within a GIS at the client's site, via a thick client provided by Infoterra or using a thin client accessed with the data. All of the services are based on the secure storage of any form of geospatial data. Information is accessed by clients based on their permissions and licensing.