News

The annual conference for the EAGE – European Association of Geologists & Engineers – took place in Amsterdam last week – 8th to 11th June. A great opportunity for professionals in geophysics, petroleum exploration, geology, reservoir engineering, mining and civil engineering to get together for one of the key events of the oil and gas IT calendar.

As an IT infrastructure specialist for the Oil & Gas industry, London-based IT consultancy ISN Solutions partnered storage vendor Isilon Systems on their stand at the show. ISN have much experience of consultancy, design, project management, installation and support of IT and comms infrastructure for the oil & gas exploration and production sector.

With seismic data storage very much on the agenda and new applications for its manipulation and interpretation being showcased, ISN and Isilon where kept busy with interest on how best to manage the obvious storage implications, not just now, but allowing for likely growth patterns into the future.

Isilon’s scale-out NAS products offer unparalleled speed of access, uptime and cost effectiveness for storage of seismic data. Having evaluated the options available in the marketplace, we have been impressed by how easy  Isilon clustered NAS arrays are to manage and maintain. We have seen nothing that scales so well, while still maintaining extremely fast response times. Isilon’s product range includes solutions for storage needs from 5 Terabytes to over 5 Petabytes. Ideal for many geoscience applications.

Call us on 020 7313 9900  to tell us more about your storage challenges.

Congratulations to ISN engineers Alex Woolsey and Chris Territt who successfully completed the safety training necessary to work on offshore oil and gas facilities.

Both engineers underwent intensive combined OPITO approved training course covering:

• Basic Offshore Safety Induction & Emergency Training (BOSIET)
• Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET)
• Escape System Training (Norwegian OLF standard)
• Emergency Breathing Systems (EBS)

Like other ISN engineers they are qualified to work offshore from the North Sea to the Tropics. ISN need to maintain readiness to work offshore at short notice to provide IT support and consultancy anywhere in the world for our oil & gas exploration and production customers.

An ISN client made the tough decision to make a few staff redundant because of the downturn. They have a tight procedure for handling logon account deactivation and return of security badge, etc. However one of the departing staff asked if his account could be reactivated from 5pm for half an hour so that he could finish off a key piece of documentation. His boss agreed to let him finish the work.

Data wiped out

The next day some of his former work mates found that about 15GB of file data had gone missing – 4,500 files. When the IT support team investigated, they saw from the logs on their NetApp Storage Area Network (SAN) system that a folder which was backed up at 5pm was no longer there at 6pm. On closer inspection, they were able to establish that the missing folders had been deleted at 5:20pm.

Snapshot restore

Their NetApp SAN is set up to take snapshots of all data at hourly intervals, so restoring to the 5pm copy meant that all of the deleted data was able to be restored completely. In addition, it took a mere 10 minutes from noticing that the data was gone to having it all back to normal.

Tape backup?

If our client had relied purely on tape backup then it would certainly have taken a lot longer; many companies only take a tape backup of their data once a day. This would mean that they would have lost a day’s work and it might have taken hours to get the previous might’s version restored.

Investigate better backup methods

The cost of storage is falling and the amount of data held by businesses is growing (some say the it doubles every two years). It is nearly always cheaper to add more space than to prune the data set down to size. However that can create other problems if the backup solution is not scaled up to match.

There are plenty of gotchas in IT. To avoid them, please call our consultants to get some practical advice. We are trained and experienced in providing infrastructure solutions which help businesses be productive, even when the unexpected happens.

ISN have recently been reassessed and reapproved for ISO9001:2008 quality management systems, standards and guidelines for the provision of information technology and telecommunications consultancy services.

The updated certification replaces our previous 9001:2000 accreditation and shows that the company has demonstrated its ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and regulatory requirements. ISO 9001:2008 also aims to enhance customer satisfaction through effective processes for continual improvement.

How do you acheive your business goals without spending more?

Cutting costs ruthlessly is easy but to damage your productivity will lose you revenue

Over the past 10 years ISN Solutions have helped hundreds of businesses and organisations of all kinds get the most from their IT spend. We’d like to hear from you about the IT challenges you face in your work - we think we can help.

In the meantime, here are three ways our current clients are getting more from their IT investment:

1 – Reduce the number of servers you run

This London web publishing company made savings in power, office space, IT support and gave better service to their customers.
Find out more >>

2 – Allow your staff to work from anywhere

An easy route to savings in office space while increasing productivity and business flexibility. Here’s how a financial recruitment specialist benefited during the recent snow
Find out more >>

3 – Network rationalisation

Get more out of existing Internet and WAN links and faster data access. This property company got £20k pa value from a one off £7k spend
Find out more >>

If you are interested in exploring what we can do to help, you can contact me on 020 7313 9900 or add a comment to this post.

Gold Partnership provides a “hotline” to Microsoft not available to smaller companies

Microsoft consider the number of MCSE qualified engineers employed, the quantity of references from satisifed clients and depth of knowledge of Microsoft products before awarding Gold Level Partner accreditation to a solutions provider. ISN have been a Microsoft Gold Partner since 2006.

ISN’s specialist competencies have been recognised by Microsoft in these fields:

• Advanced Infrastructure Solutions
• Networking Infrastructure Solutions
• Information Worker Solutions

Our partnership with Microsoft is invaluable in helping our clients with support and consultancy for their IT systems. We have a “hotline” to Microsoft not available to smaller companies.

Find out about ISN’s partner relationships with other major IT vendors.