Oil and Gas

The oil and gas compute environment is very diverse; from seismic data collection, processing and analysis, to visualization and reservoir management. Seismic processing is probably the most demanding and plays a huge role in determining how physical exploration dollars are invested. Continuous and timely modeling, visualization and analysis are required to make the most important data available at the right time. Massive amounts of data are collected for this purpose; computing is performed, data is accessed, and time is of the essence. The use of scale-out NAS featuring a Single Namespace, high aggregate capacity, and high aggregate sequential throughput capabilities has gained tremendous popularity in these environments. Scale-out nodes can be expensive and it may take numerous nodes in the cluster to achieve desired capacity and performance. High aggregate system IOPS, helpful for small and/or random I/O, are not a particular strength of scale-out NAS. In fact, applications demanding high IOPS can prove to be the Achilles ’ heel for scale-out NAS, resulting in “hot spots” that if not addressed can bring down overall performance. The ANX 1500 provides several distinct advantages in the oil and gas sector:

• By caching frequently accessed small block/file data and/or NFS metadata that typically require high IOPS from the NAS, the ANX several very important benefits can be realized:
  • Reducing time to discovery. Access latencies to this data can be reduced for users.
  • Accelerating downstream flows. By removing processing burden from the NAS, the NAS can focus on storing data, protecting it, and delivering high sequential I/O associated with large block/files to compute clusters. Processing can be performed sooner- thereby accelerating downstream workflows.
  • Improving capacity utilization on the disk drives. It may take fewer nodes in the cluster to deliver the same performance. Less compute resource is being consumed in the NAS cluster, fewer disk drives will be required, and far less I/O will be required of drives for performance.
• Extending the life of your current NAS. The ANX 1500 transparently slides into an existing NAS environment and is very simple to install, manage and operate. It requires significantly less power, space, cooling and capital than attempting to solve performance problems by continuously adding more NAS – and can have a large positive impact on CAPEX and OPEX budgets. By relieving the NAS of the burden of responding to NFS requests its life is extended, with added headroom to support more useable storage capacity, adequately protect this capacity, and provide better performance.
• Improving performance. Alacritech’s ANX 1500 is a performance layer cache that helps scale-out NAS solutions boost performance by addressing hot spots, allowing the NAS to be relieved of satisfying NFS request for this data, be it payload or metadata.