Landmark has re-jigged its data compression offering since last year (OITJ October 2007). Working with partners NetApp and Storwize, Landmark has developed ‘DeepStor’ a data storage and compression combo. According to product manager Mark Spieler, Landmark was doubtful as to the merits of compression on seismic data. But tests performed by NetApp’s Tom Ledoux confirmed lossless and accurate compression/decompression. Early tests for Oxy suffered some performance hits, but Storwize’s 64 bit box has hiked performance by 30%.
DeepStor comes with 420 or 840 drives per cabinet with a FCAL or copper interface. Seismic data typically sees 30% compression (100 GB stored as 70GB). High compression and good query performance is reported for large Oracle databases. According to Storwize, data caching means that ‘a lot of queries don’t hit the disk’ and the reduced data transfer compensates for compression time.
DeepStor is a component of a longer term Landmark/NetApp initiative to anticipate a rapidly changing storage landscape. Ledoux ventured that in 2010, 2TB solid state drives will replace FCAL. He also sees tape drives disappearing by 2012 for some companies. Landmark is in the process of testing DeepStor prior to migrating its Petrobank data management environment to the new solution. Landmark already runs eight StorWize boxes internally.
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