Information Technology

ILM, tiered storage and active archive form a powerful trio

Information life-cycle management (ILM) is a data storage methodology and architecture that aligns IT infrastructure with operating needs, based on the changing value of information over time, at the lowest possible cost of ownership.

David Donelan and Mark Amelang, EMC Corp., Houston

The explosion of data in most oil and gas companies today is staggering and will continue to escalate as the business expands. Not only does the massive amount of data need to be stored, but it must also be rapidly available for use in making real-time, business-critical decisions. This information also needs to be backed up and protected from loss, corruption, deletion and a host of other real world security and business concerns.

Today, oil and gas project data are typically kept on primary storage, because companies are unsure when, or how, the data will need to be referenced again. And the other alternative is tape, which is not only expensive, but also not efficient for the IT environment or the business. To address these challenges, oil and gas companies are considering information lifecycle management (ILM) strategies that utilize tiered storage and active archiving capabilities. This enables firms to better manage, store and rapidly access business-critical data from the burgeoning information infrastructure.

INTRODUCING ILM

To meet IT challenges accompanying massive data growth, companies in the oil and gas industry must take into consideration the business process, IT infrastructure and generated data. Far too many organizations try separate approaches because of the way that the enterprise is organized, not to mention the manner in which application vendors and IT vendors support the organization.

Additionally, an information infrastructure for oil and gas should be industry-specific and allow integration with industry-specific applications, such as those used daily for geological and geophysical exploration. ILM utilizes policy management, information management software and tiered storage to seamlessly identify, classify and move data throughout the enterprise to support business initiatives.

ILM is not an out-of-the-box solution. It is a comprehensive strategy that is developed and refined over time to more efficiently and cost-effectively manage, store and access information based on its changing value in an organization. For instance, an operating company generates a tremendous amount of digital geological and geophysical data during exploration. As time passes, this information may not be as pertinent to the business (Fig. 1), but it may need to be retrieved quickly, based on future operational needs.

Fig. 1. Relative values of upstream assets and information throughout the asset life cycle.

In upstream computing environments, work is largely done on a project basis. Consequently, application vendors have made strides toward project-based organization, and infrastructure vendors have made strides toward moving and storing data based on the project. However, the two worlds are still managed separately, most of the time. This certainly does not relieve the massive data growth problem.

TIERED STORAGE – THE FOUNDATION OF ILM

Tiered storage architecture is the foundation of ILM. Rather than keeping all information on high-end, more costly storage, companies can classify data according to its criticality and put the most important items on the most expensive storage, and less important data on less expensive storage. This can be done in multiple tiers, depending on a company’s data and reliability requirements. This is an effective strategy for lowering storage costs and complexity, but it is just a starting point.

There are more daunting questions that must be answered when classifying and tiering information. For instance, how do you determine which data go on which tier? How do you physically move the data? Do you accomplish all of this manually? Can the storage administrator determine how to accurately classify geological and geophysical data? If a user does it, is he creating a more complicated system? While this is a complex process, it will enable oil and gas companies to better understand the information that it generates, and the applications that it relies on to implement a system and storage that best meets companies’ needs.

ACTIVE ARCHIVING

The idea of an active archive is simple. Keep data not currently being accessed, but that will be needed in the near term, online and readily accessible while reducing the primary storage pool. Active archiving makes the data in the primary storage pool easier to find and access, while reducing such aspects as 1) The backup windows for primary storage; 2) Storage management complexity; and 3) Total cost of ownership. And, from a business perspective, it speeds information discovery, decreases decision time and increases decision accuracy.

This concept has been around for a while, and it even provides the basic reasoning for tiered storage. However, until recently, the technology to make active archive a reality was not available. After all, if an active archive is deployed on an additional network-attached storage or ATA device, it is just another storage tier. It does not drive the true value of an active archive. It still needs to be managed, backup windows are not improved, and it does not enable the scalability demanded by explosive data growth without further proliferating storage targets.

An effective, active archive is a self-healing storage platform that stores data objects outside of a file system and operating system limitations, and it doesn’t rely on traditional methods of backup to ensure integrity and security. The primary advantage of an active archive deployed in a tiered storage infrastructure, based on ILM strategy, is that it reduces the primary data store and keeps it from growing out of control in this new world of massive data growth. It enables backup windows to stay within bounds that are achievable for primary data assurance against corruption and loss. And it provides the gateway to long-term archive to tape or other disk-based archive systems.

REFINING IT

To meet operational challenges posed by explosive data growth from business, geological and geophysical applications, operators are embracing information lifecycle management. By building an information infrastructure that prioritizes data (based on its current value) and manages this information using tiered storage and active archive, operators will dramatically reduce the primary data stores required to manage massive data growth while lowering storage costs and complexity.