Auspex clients such as Anadarko, Arco, and BP Amoco to name but three, have found that the traditional seat-of-the pants approach to network application and data servers is no longer good enough.

Mission critical asset teams require near 100% up-time and this is where the new Houston-based Energy Group comes in, providing scalable, high-performance network attached storage (NAS) solutions. These range in size from departmental

servers to enterprise-class, multi-terabyte systems. This high-end technology is needed to reliably and cost-effectively consolidate seismic data. Such datasets are often scattered throughout the enterprise, including on individual workstations, where they are difficult to manage and slow to retrieve. Bruce N. Moore, President and CEO of Auspex Systems claims "Auspex's patented NetOS software technology delivers the reliability, scalability, availability and manageability demanded by the fast growing energy industry,"

Tom Gardner, manager of the new Auspex Energy Unit explained to PDM that the specifics of E&P computing were such that generic network and server solutions were proving unsatisfactory. Elsewhere, the database server market has offers systems tuned to provide secure hi-availability data for databases, but not for the massive file-oriented data involved in seismic interpretation and processing. High uptime is also assured by the Auspex servers so that they can carry on providing data to users even if the controller goes down.

Miller told PDM that a major cause of system downtime is the instability of UNIX systems. Auspex's dedicated Functional Multiprocessing CPU architecture avoids such downtime. Additionally, administration can be carried out and new software can be added without stopping data delivery.

At Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, a network infrastructure based on an Auspex system has eliminated network bottlenecks and data access delays, while dramatically reducing data administration overhead. "Auspex has a unique understanding of our industry's demand for high-throughput consolidated data," said Rick Stuart, Manager of Exploration UNIX Systems at Anadarko. Auspex has invested in a team of Houston-based oil and gas information specialists who have significant prior experience in managing oil and gas data centers.

With a proven track record, the group provides consulting services to energy customers, with systems integration performed at Auspex's Santa Clara headquarters. At the enterprise level, the Auspex Energy Group will support solutions built around Auspex' 4Front NS2000 system, which rapidly and reliably delivers network data to large numbers of heterogeneous clients and servers. The result of an 18-month program of strategic initiatives, the NS2000 provides multi-terabyte data storage as well as high-speed network interfaces for continuous data access.

The Group will also deploy the new Auspex 4Front AS100 and AS200 appliance systems, which bring Auspex's technology to entry-level workgroups and departments in an "easy to buy, install and manage all-in-one appliance". Auspex's motto is to deliver "All the Data, All the Time".