GX Technology Selects Gear6 Scalable Caching Appliances to Accelerate Seismic Imaging Applications
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Centralized Storage Caching Solution Dramatically Improves Project Time-to-Completion and Streamlines Infrastructure Management
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 19 - Gear6, accelerating storage for real time application performance, today announced that GX Technology (GXT), a leading provider of advanced seismic imaging solutions to oil and gas companies worldwide, is deploying its CACHEfx scalable caching appliances to accelerate strategic seismic data processing applications and streamline infrastructure management. The Gear6 centralized storage caching solution, which integrated transparently into GXT's infrastructure, helps to streamline and significantly reduce the turnaround time for projects that rely on these input/output intensive applications. With thousands of processing nodes and nearly a petabyte of seismic storage, the demanding GXT data and application environment showcases the ability of CACHEfx appliances to power extremely large workloads and data sets.
GXT produces the highest fidelity land and marine subsurface images used to reduce the risk and cost of finding and producing energy resources. With services and products spanning the entire seismic process from survey design to advanced imaging, GXT's Image-Driven(TM) solutions include: seismic data processing services such as depth and reverse time migration and full-wave imaging, geophysical analysis, reservoir modeling, and final image rendering. The Houston-based company operates eight regional service centers worldwide as well as advanced imaging centers strategically located in North America, Europe, West Africa and Latin America.
According to Keith Ritchie, senior IT manager with GXT, the company's imaging projects require a sophisticated computing and storage resource infrastructure that must support random access to huge data sets by thousands of simultaneous application servers. "Given the market demand for our seismic services and the data intensity of each project, rapid cycle times and high resource utilization are paramount. For certain applications, our productivity was constrained by a network attached storage infrastructure that could not deliver enough data across the network. This required manual data replication and limited the number of simultaneous resources we could utilize on a single project," said Ritchie.
To overcome the storage system limitations and utilization challenges, GXT is deploying CACHEfx appliances from Gear6. The CACHEfx appliances centralize caching resources in a coherent pool of shared memory that scales to terabyte levels. Data access can be accelerated on any storage device by any client, without requiring any modifications to existing file, storage, management, and backup systems. In the case of GXT, the CACHEfx appliances are deployed in conjunction with a clustered file system to greatly improve application query response times and shorten project completion cycles.
"CACHEfx appliances greatly simplify data management and allow us to do things with network attached storage that we could not do before," continued Ritchie. "Specifically, we can now serve significantly more data to maximize the utilization of our entire compute infrastructure. And the cache automatically retains the most frequently accessed data, reducing management overhead and the need for manual data movement."
"Given the soaring worldwide demand to find and produce energy resources with the least risk and cost, we have our hands full," says Nick Bernitsas, senior vice president of data processing at GXT. "This is why the Gear6 solution is so strategic to our business. The CACHEfx appliances are tackling a very complex problem and making it simple to deploy with immediate performance results. Our geophysicists benefit from accelerated application performance that delivers faster results, increases their productivity, and enables GXT to keep pace with business demands."
About GX Technology
GX Technology (GXT) is a leading provider of advanced seismic imaging solutions to oil & gas companies worldwide. GXT's Image-Driven(TM) solutions include: seismic data processing services, such as state-of-the-art depth migration, reverse time migration, and full-wave imaging; multi-client seismic data libraries, including basin-scale SPAN(TM) seismic programs; software and services for seismic survey design, geophysical analysis, and reservoir modeling; and start-to-finish seismic imaging programs that encompass survey planning, field acquisition, and final image rendering. GXT is a Houston-based company that operates eight regional service centers worldwide. For more information about the company, visit: http://www.i-o.com/gxt/.
About Gear6
Gear6 delivers the industry's first centralized storage caching solutions that close the widening performance gap between increasingly powerful servers and lagging mechanical storage devices. By transparently delivering scalable, real time data access, Gear6 eliminates productivity-killing I/O bottlenecks and delivers guaranteed transaction response times optimized for time-sensitive Fortune 1000 enterprises. The company's CACHEfx appliances accelerate business critical applications, protect against peak load disruptions and maximize quality of service levels.
For more information call 877-GEAR-SIX (432-7749), email contact1@gear6.com or visit www.gear6.com/.
Source: Gear6
CONTACT: Kevin Gallagher of Gallagher Group Communications,
+1-925-831-1041, kevin@gg-comm.com, for Gear6
Web site: www.gear6.com/
http://www.i-o.com/gxt
