Secures 1 petabyte of archaeological data for future research
Builds data backup and disaster recovery plan in less than a month and a half
Transfers 700 TB of data to Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Went from decision to solution architecture to start of transfer in less than four days
The Israel Antiquities Authority modernized its data systems with Google Cloud, securing its treasure trove of archaeological data and making it accessible for research.
The Israel Antiquities Authority modernized its data systems with Google Cloud, securing its treasure trove of archaeological data and making it accessible for research.
A bronze-age burial cave, untouched since the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II. A Maccabean rebel's silver coin, buried in the desert for more than 2,200 years. The graffiti of a medieval knight, scribbled on a hostel wall during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The ground beneath Israel is alive with treasures. And it is up to the Israel Antiquities Authority to uncover and preserve them, raising public awareness of the country's rich and diverse archaeological heritage.
Crucial to this process is cataloging every archaeological item and logging it in the Israel Antiquities Authority's database. "Saving this data is the most important part of our work," explains Alby Malka, CIO, Israel Antiquities Authority, who leads the modernization project at the Israel Antiquities Authority. "The State of Israel is a small country, with approximately 40,000 archaeological sites beneath its soil. When antiquities are discovered during excavations prior to road or new building construction, the findings are documented using advanced methods. Often, unless the discovery is exceptional, they are either covered or removed before construction resumes. This means that, at times, this data is the only remaining record of the original site. By preserving it, we make it available for future research."
The challenge of finding treasure in buried data
Our information technology was in crisis. Data was sitting in silos across on-premises systems. A lot of it wasn’t backed up, meaning it could get lost, and there was no disaster recovery plan. I started looking into Google Cloud and how it could help us manage our data effectively.
Alby Malka
CIO, Israel Antiquities Authority
Cataloging this data to make it accessible is easier said than done. The large number of records, combined with the data-intensive technologies used to gather them, including photogrammetry and drone footage, add up to approximately a petabyte of data in the Israel Antiquities Authority's possession. However, as Malka discovered when he began work at the organization, much of this data wasn't being managed effectively.
"Our information technology was in crisis," Malka explains. "Data was sitting in silos across on-premise systems. A lot of it wasn't backed up, meaning it could get lost, and there was no disaster recovery plan. I started looking into Google Cloud and how it could help us manage our data effectively."
As a governmental institution, the Israel Antiquities Authority has access to Project Nimbus, the Israeli government's cloud transformation project. Realizing that creating an on-premises backup would be too slow and costly, Malka considered a range of cloud providers. Malka chose Google Cloud, in part because of the success of Project Nimbus, but mainly because he was convinced that Google Cloud offered the simplest and most secure way to migrate the organization's data.
Securing history with a cloud-based data backup
Malka's first project was to reduce the risk of data loss by gathering all the data to a centralized database then backing it up to Google Cloud. To do this, Malka and his team used Google Cloud and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP (CVO), a data management layer that runs on Google Cloud. The first and most time-consuming step was to break up the petabyte of data into manageable chunks that could be successfully copied and backed up. In a matter of days, they began the backup process, successfully transferring 95% of the data to CVO.
"When I look at the risky situation we were in, and how we were able to complete the backup to Google Cloud and start the disaster recovery within a month and a half, it's an amazing time to market," says Malka. "Other CIOs are astounded we managed it in so little time."
When I look at the risky situation we were in, and how we were able to complete the backup to Google Cloud and start the disaster recovery within a month and a half, it’s an amazing time to market. Other CIOs are astounded we managed it in so little time.
Alby Malka
CIO, Israel Antiquities Authority
Preparing for any scenario with fast, reliable disaster recovery
With the data backed up, the Israel Antiquities Authority began implementing a robust disaster recovery strategy to ensure that, in the event of disaster, it is able to restore access to its data quickly to minimize interruption. At the time, the organization had no disaster recovery plan in place, meaning that if something went wrong, it would have taken a few months of work to get its systems back up and running. Malka's goal was to find a disaster recovery plan that would enable it to restore its system in as little time, and with as little complexity, as possible.
Malka knew from previous experience that an on-premises disaster recovery plan could take months to build and would incur significant hardware costs. Instead he worked with Google Cloud partner CommIT to analyze the range of options for a cloud-based solution.
"There are a lot of ways to build disaster recovery in the cloud, but in the case of an emergency, some can be very complicated to operate," Malka explains. "With Google Cloud we chose the most reliable option and the one that would be the least complicated to use in a real crisis."
The Israel Antiquities Authority built its disaster recovery plan using Google Cloud VMware Engine, eliminating the need to first re-architect its existing on-premises databases for the cloud. With its cloud orchestration and automation tools to automate the in-cloud recovery process, VMware Engine also provided Malka with the faster, less complex disaster recovery he wanted. The organization has now set its recovery time objective (RTO) at eight hours for its critical systems, meaning that for the first time the organization will be able to get back up and running quickly in the event of a major incident.
Illuminating the past with modern research methods
Since we began our data modernization in Google Cloud, people in the organization now understand that by revolutionizing the way we work, we could change the world of archaeology.
Alby Malka
CIO, Israel Antiquities Authority
The Israel Antiquities Authority is now turning to what Malka describes as its "most important project": the organization of its data. Currently, the way its data is spread across applications and services means there is no data consistency throughout the organization.
Malka's team is now unifying all this data in one place to make it accessible and searchable to researchers. Given the amount of data in question, this is a project that Malka predicts could take years. In the meantime, his team has started to look at generative AI to provide a faster solution to help researchers quickly find what they are looking for.
For this, Malka's team is using the Israel Antiquities Authority's wealth of archaeological data to train a Gemini model to answer researchers' specific queries, enabling them to carry out their work more efficiently. "We work with a lot of university archaeology departments around the world, and if we could use generative AI to give them access to our archaeological data, it would be a world first. It would be of huge value to archaeological research," says Malka.
Not only will this help the Israel Antiquities Authority in its mission to raise public awareness of the country's archaeological heritage, it will also keep the organization's sensitive data private. This is because Gemini doesn't use organizations' private data to train its foundation models, meaning organizations, such as the Israel Antiquities Authority, can use it to build their own models, knowing their data will remain secure.
As Malka continues his modernization of the Israel Antiquities Authority's data systems, he is steadily changing perspectives within the organization, gaining people's trust as he shows how a modern approach to data can be used to illuminate the secrets of the past.
"Since we began our data modernization in Google Cloud, people in the organization now understand that by revolutionizing the way we work, we can change the world of archaeology," says Malka.
The Israel Antiquities Authority manages the country's antiquities and antiquity sites, preserving and studying Israel's archaeological treasures, while raising public awareness of the country's archaeological heritage.
Industries: Government
Location: Israel
Products: Google Cloud, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Gemini, Google Cloud VMware Engine, Vertex AI
About Google Cloud Partner- CommIT
CommIT is the leading systems house in Israel, delivering cutting-edge digital transformation projects for its customers since 2005.
