Disk data storage for seismic - $1000 per terabyte
Feature Articles, Mar  05  2009 (Digital Energy Journal)

- Landmark offers incentive for operators to finally give up tape with a new online, disk-based storage system for technical data.

Landmark, a brand of Halliburton’s Drilling and Evaluation Division, has launched PetroStorTM a new data storage solution which promises to finally enable reliable data storage for the same price as tape and provide real-time access to seismic files and archived project data, says Marc Spieler, director of Technology Operations with Landmark.

The PetroStorTM technology lowers archival storage costs to around $1000 per terabyte by combining fast, high capacity hard drives with data management software from NetApp and data compression appliance from Storwize.

Although a terabyte of hard drive storage can be purchased for as little as $140, many companies still expect to pay $3,000 to $10,000 per terabyte for data storage on disk, Mr Spieler says.

The PetroStorTM solution is designed for oil and gas customers who find themselves facing an increasing amount of seismic data, as well as a growing need to access project data archives as they explore prospects in more complex formations and re-examine mature assets.

A big advantage of storing seismic data on disk drives is that seismic interpreters can be given direct access to it, says Mr Spieler.

“Today, if an interpreter wants to look at the pre-stack data, a lot of times that’s on a tape somewhere,” he says. This can mean days or weeks of waiting while the tape is located and transported.

Interpreters may choose to just make do with the information they have rather than waiting for the tape to be available – making the resulting analysis less accurate than it could be.

With PetroStorTM users can get both seismic files and archived data from network drives via their computer desktops, as easily as from their computer hard drive.

Landmark offers a number of services to complement the PetroStorTM solution, designed to help companies make their data more accessible, including support in migrating their existing data from tape to disk, indexing files and incorporating metadata.

Tape vs disk

Users have always preferred the accessibility of disk drive storage, but it has been cost prohibitive in the past, because it typically costs 4 to 5 times as much as tape, Mr Spieler says.

“A lot of customers have tens of thousands of tapes which they store in various locations,” he says. “When it comes to accessing the data, it can take days or weeks because someone has to manually find the tape and load the data.”

There is a further issue of tapes decaying over time, and often, archived data is in an outdated format adding the extra step of transcription to ensure the data is protected.

Similar issues can also occur with hard drives, of course, but it is much easier migrating data from one disk technology to another when you can do it with buttons on a keyboard.

Landmark’s solution also gets around the problem of people wanting to have their own copy of the data – when data is stored on a networked drive and accessible online, all users can have convenient access.

Data management

As with a typical disk solution, data on the PetroStorTM solution is protected in the event of disk failure by the same enterprise-level data protection used in standard NetApp filers; maintenance to replace the failed disk is simple, non-disruptive, and provides the users seamless access to their data.

The data is compressed as it is stored on the disk drive, and decompressed as it is retrieved – it all happens in real time and is transparent to the user. In Landmark’s experience most seismic and petrotechnical data can be compressed between 30 and 50 percent.

Because PetroStorTM compresses and decompresses data in front of the filer, users will see read and write times decrease since there is comparably less data being written to and read from the disks. This will also decrease the resource utilization on the filer when being accessed by multiple users.

“What all this means for the users, is that the PetroStorTM solution’s functions will be transparent to them – they’re not going to know where their data is sitting, they just will know that they have access to it when and where they need it.”

Halliburton

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