Hitachi next-generation unified storage solutions meet the challenges of today’s data-intensive oil and gas exploration and production activities. For more information on Hitachi Unified Storage and Hitachi NAS Platform 4000 series please visit: http://www.hds.com/products/file-and-content/network-attached-storage/?WT.ac=us_mg_pro_hnasp

1. Access to Data Determines Success
Production decline in mature oil and gas fields coupled
with heightened customer demand calls for industry
development of known energy reserves. Seismic data is the
basis for a better understanding of subsurface structures.
Faster and easier access to data shortens time to important
decisions about prospects.
Achieve Higher Quality Decisions Faster
for a Competitive Edge in the Oil and Gas Industry
SOLUTIONPROFILE
Energy Demands Continue to Grow
Much of the world is expected to significantly increase
energy consumption over the next decade, especially
emerging economies. In China alone the number of
cars have gone from 5 million in 1990 to well over 30
million today, and is expected to hit 100 million by
2020. As a result, the need to find new energy sources
continues to grow.
To meet this demand, the oil and gas industry has
turned to more sophisticated analysis and gathering
higher fidelity data in ever-increasing datasets. These
new tools improve the chances of success and
reduce time to discovery.
Additionally, these businesses must produce and
deliver oil and gas to consumers globally, cost-
efficiently and on time. These industries are truly
global and have wide-ranging influence, from explo-
ration and production, to refining and retail. They
also work in the production of raw material that is the
basis for much of the chemical industry and items in
everyday use. Such items include synthetic fabrics for
clothing and plastic for everything from water bottles to
building materials, even the asphalt we drive on.
nsform Virtualization Economics Innovate
nformation Global Change Intelligent Technolog
ight Opportunity Social Infrastructure Integrate
INSPIRE

2. SOLUTION PROFILE
Scale to Reach Quality
Decisions Faster
Speed is essential when exploration
organizations try to determine the com-
mercial viability of tapping new reservoirs
to meet increasing energy demands. The
key to accelerating analysis and quality
decision-making is the ability to store and
manage rapidly expanding volumes of seis-
mic data. Data from exploration equipment,
including new technologies such as down-
hole sensors, and ever-increasing fidelity
data coming from geophones and hydro-
phones, constitute the diverse sets of data
that must be considered. The combination
of a multitude of data sources and faster
acquisition drives up the size of the data-
sets, which today easily reaches into the
petabyte range per square kilometer.
Large investments depend on making
high-quality decisions within project dead-
lines. The cost per well is in the US$20M
range for on-shore projects and can go
beyond US$200M per off-shore well.
Making the right decisions is crucial and
can ultimately determine the success of a
project and the future of a company. It’s
important to provide constant access to the
data and have data protection architected
into the solution from the outset.
With today’s competition to find energy
sources, the ultimate goal is to better
interpret more data in less time. The key
to accelerating analysis workflows and
decision making is the ability to store and
access rapidly expanding volumes of seis-
mic data. Making data accessible to the
appropriate parties in a reasonable time for
analysis is critical to avoid performance bot-
tlenecks that can add days or weeks to the
discovery process.
Keep Pace With Evolving
Requirements
Advances in seismic imaging and analysis
tools are helping organizations speed the
discovery of new energy sources. These
advances also enable analysis of archived
data to re-evaluate the previous decisions in
light of new economic realities. Seismic data
typically is stored forever and must be acces-
sible for this type of re-examination. To provide
these capabilities, Hitachi Content Platform is
tightly integrated with Hitachi NAS Platform
(HNAS). The interworking of these products
Figure 1. Hitachi Unified Storage family systems consolidate disparate storage solutions under a
single management platform.

3. 3
Innovation is the engine of change,
and information is its fuel. Innovate
intelligently to lead your market, grow
your company, and change the world.
Manage your information with
Hitachi Data Systems.
www.hds.com/innovate
provides the required archive and search
functionality to make existing data of many
formats available on short notice.
Over time, energy-imaging algorithms and
their implementations have evolved faster
than the available hardware. For example,
algorithms might be selectively tuned to get
a hardware-assisted boost by running on
field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),
graphics processing units (GPUs) or other
accelerators or architectures. Thus, there
have been continued efforts to improve algo-
rithms and take advantage of new processor
technology. Simply put, such hardware
accelerates seismic analysis computational
workflows to a point where it is no longer the
primary limiting factor in the workflow.
IT infrastructures are challenged to “keep up”
with serving the data to the computational
operations. Unfortunately, I/O performance
bottlenecks can occur when traditional NAS
and SAN storage systems host the data and
feed into the computational workflows. Such
systems do not deliver the performance or
scalability required to support today’s energy
exploration efforts. These deficits become
especially evident during peak load times in a
shared environment where multiple demands
simultaneously stress the storage system.
The common approach is to simply add
more storage devices, which adds com-
plexity and cost but does not necessarily
solve the problem. What is needed is a
solution that is architected from the start to
scale and to handle diverse performance
requirements. HNAS network storage
systems are uniquely designed with a
hardware assist in the form of FPGAs
that provide the robust performance for
I/O operations (IOPS). This performance
is required to handle the mixed storage
workloads that always hit shared storage in
an environment with multiple applications.
HNAS family systems are also equipped
with industry-leading network connectivity
for throughput-oriented applications being
served through standard protocols, such as
NFS and CIFS.
The storage behind HNAS nodes uses
a SAN and is an example of the unified
view of storage that Hitachi provides. This
configuration essentially provides the ease
of use and familiarity of NAS. It serves the
data to the clients in an up to 16PB global
namespace. At the same time, it provides
a tiered storage infrastructure and all the
functionality and performance of SAN on
the back end.
Optimize Operations
Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) family sys-
tems provide a simple way to consolidate
disparate storage solutions in a unifying
architecture and single management frame-
work (see Figure 1). This consolidation not
only simplifies operations for upstream oil
and gas exploration and production, but
it can also seamlessly address enterprise
application areas. As you follow the oil and
gas workflow from upstream exploration
and production into the so-called mid-
stream and downstream, applications like
enterprise resource planning (ERP) for man-
aging assets of production and eventually
resale come into play (see Figure 2). These
applications need storage solutions that are
integrated with the rest of the infrastructure.
A common solution for both file-based and
block-based data can significantly simplify
infrastructures and reduce operational cost.
The latest addition to the HUS family of sys-
tems, HUS VM, offers significantly increased
performance and scalability. It includes
many features and functionality previously
only found on high-end enterprise-class
systems. Advanced virtualization technol-
ogy eases deployment and migration and
drives up utilization to provide a superior
economy of operation.
It is becoming increasingly critical in the oil
and gas industry to integrate data flows
from sensors monitoring the extraction of
oil and gas from active fields. Financial and
even weather-related data must be inte-
grated to determine the optimal productions
profile from the known resources. The data
is varied and near real time. It is important
for ingest and timely access to this data
to have a unified storage architecture. This
Figure 2. As you follow the oil and gas workflow, applications like ERP for managing assets of
production and eventually resale come into play.

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© Hitachi Data Systems Corporation 2013. All rights reserved. HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. Innovate With Information is a trademark or registered
trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.
Notice: This document is for informational purposes only, and does not set forth any warranty, expressed or implied, concerning any equipment or service offered or to be offered by
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation.
SP-103-C DG July 2013
architecture is tasked with supporting applica-
tion requirements and handling unpredictable
changes in data types as sensors and applica-
tions are put in production.
Most companies in the oil and gas industry
are also global companies of significant
size dealing with regulations that differ from
country to country. For example, in many
cases seismic data can’t leave the originat-
ing country. Therefore, companies involved
with handling this data have to be able
to protect it from ending up in the wrong
place. A complete information management
system implemented using a rules-based
engine that automatically enforces data pol-
icies is essential to reduce complexity, avoid
human error and simplify operations.
As part of the continuing digital evolution,
modern day oil field operations are becom-
ing more automated. Whether in the areas
of drilling wells, producing in the field or
refining crude oil, these operations are
using thousands of sensors, valves and
actuators to automate activities and collect
information (see Figure 3). These devices
generate terabytes of data daily that must
be collected, stored and analyzed, often
on a real-time basis. Having access and
the ability to scrutinize this data quickly
provides companies with safer and more
efficient work environments.
Hitachi Data Systems as Your
Technology Partner
Energy organizations must stay compet-
itive in the market by enabling the most
cost-efficient production and distribution. To
support this, Hitachi Data Systems provides
the leading storage virtualization system
with a unified view of file- and block-based
information. We enable the consolidation
Figure 3. Sensors, valves and actuators used throughout oil field operations generate terabytes
of data daily that must be collected, stored and analyzed, often on a real-time basis.
and use of existing storage systems and
provide investment protection.
Hitachi Data Systems storage solutions
for the oil and gas industry deliver cost
efficiency, reliability, performance and
advanced data management features. Our
technologies help you to meet the chal-
lenges of today’s data-intensive oil and gas
exploration and production activities, as
well as strict project deadlines. HDS stor-
age solutions provide an architecture that
is designed for massive scalability while
reducing complexity and saving on total
cost of ownership.