The data archival challenge

Seismic information continues to grow at staggering rates in petroleum and gas exploration and production (E&P). Driven by higher-fidelity subsurface imaging and enhanced interpretation and visualisation technologies, this digital tidal wave includes new pre- and post-stack volumes, as well as derivative attribute volumes. For E&P data managers, poor access to the high-quality, complete data they need to make informed decisions can cost millions of dollars, and many E&P geoscientists spend far too much of their time identifying, locating and obtaining data they need for their mission-critical analyses.

Every dollar saved on archiving this data for seismic storage, processing and interpretation -critical yet passive requirements - could be redirected to proactive computing. The latter includes improving data access for seismic processing and interpretation application for better reservoir characterisation. This can facilitate real-time well operations modelling or global collaboration, which ultimately helps reduce risk and decrease cycle times.

Tape technology has long been the data archival mainstay for E&P companies and will continue to be a requisite part of the storage hierarchy for many organisations for years to come, simply because of the vast amount of legacy data. Yet today, some forward-thinking companies are looking at active archiving (near-line or online archiving for shorter-term use). Tape is unable to effectively fulfil the active archiving role due to its slow pace of data location, access and recovery. Tape also cannot ensure integrity of data over time and requires periodic tape remastering at high cost, unless a robust archiving solution is in play that automates the latter.

To address this, we now recommend and implement a variety of technologies that enable disk-based storage to complement or, in some instances, replace tape-based archiving in E&P applications. For example, data compression technology for disk storage has come a long way. Today, lossless compression solutions significantly reduce the storage requirements for both pre- and post-stack seismic data, without introducing data integrity issues.

A second example is data deduplication, which reduces the amount of data required to be physically stored by eliminating redundant information and replacing subsequent iterations of it with a pointer to the original. A prime candidate for deduplication is 'new project files' that copy files from existing projects. Other technological advances that support disk-based storage include improved use of metadata in archiving software; improved reliability of storage (for example, a RAID 6 implementation) that enables use of low-cost Serial ATA (SATA) disks for seismic data storage; and tiered storage solutions (that is, 'hot storage' versus 'cold storage').

Recent cost analyses between online storage and near-line storage technologies, such as tape-based systems, show that online storage can be more cost-effective than tape-based solutions over the lifetime of the seismic data.

Advanced disk-based solutions can enable better-informed decision-making using the latest data all in one place. They can enable E&P users to identify, locate and retrieve data quickly, accelerating mission-critical decision-making, reducing field costs and improving utilisation of field assets. At the same time, the solutions can improve geophysicist productivity due to easier access to data anywhere and anytime. The same technologies can also accelerate data recovery in the event of data loss, corruption or disaster.

Advanced disk-based solutions can enable more efficient completion of asset sales, including transfer of digital assets. They can reduce the cost of transcription and remastering of tapes due to the transfer of some archiving to disk. This can also enable 'platform protection', avoiding obsolescence of data formats, systems, operating systems and applications. This benefit, as well as improved data integrity, can reduce information technology costs. Looking forward, the solutions can provide flexibility and scalability to meet continued data growth and analysis needs.

About

NetApp's Middle East and Africa Energy Industry Director Ashraf Atia started the company's oil and gas vertical in the Middle East and African region and manages a team of industry professionals in the region. With eight years' experience in oil and gas data management, Ashraf helped numerous regional clients speed their time to discovery and production.