Santos has released more chapter and verse on its private ‘cloud’ based virtualization solution for its upstream applications (Oil IT Journal March 2011). The horsepower driving the open-source thin client software is provided by an IBM x3650 M3 server with Nvidia QuadroPlex graphics processing units which provide real-time 3D rendering to ‘standard-issue’ notebook computers. The result is a portable, high performance 3D Red Hat Linux environment accessible from a standard Windows laptop with no 3D capabilities. Santos serves its 600 concurrent users from 12 servers located at its regional offices.
IS Manager Andy Moore said that the solution has resulted in a $2.5 million cost saving to Santos, ‘Red Hat immediately delivered a faster, cheaper and more stable platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is used in our development and production environments. It is has been the platform of choice for the oil and gas industry for some time as the preferred development environment for the major geoscience software vendors.’ Santos also reports a reduction over 300,000 KWh/year in electricity consumption. Santos’ virtualization effort won a Red Hat Linux Global Innovation Award last May. The company is now extending its virtualization support to deliver 64-bit Windows 7, again from the IBM/Nvidia servers. More from www.oilit.com/links/1106_23 (Nvidia) and www.oilit.com/links/1106_24 (Red Hat).
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