East Resources Inc. About East Resources

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1 Empowered by Innovation Challenges 100%+ annual data growth Managing growing systems with a lean IT group Server sprawl Time consumed by backup and restores Customary budget constraints Solution NEC D3i SAN Storage VMware Taps into the Value of NEC s D-Series SAN Storage About East Resources Challenges Results Higher application availability and faster deployment File transfer performance increased by 108% More up-to-date data for the business Restore time reduced by 75% Backup speed doubled More predictable budget and purchases Managing more systems but less infrastructure with the same staff Starting new projects that were on hold East Resources, Inc., established in 1983, is an independent exploration and development company with land holdings of over 1.25 million acres. East Resources owns and operates over 2,400 producing oil and gas wells in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Colorado and has active exploratory drilling programs underway in the Rockies. At a Glance Industry: Oil and gas exploration and development Headquarters: Warrendale, Pennsylvania Founded: 1983 Employees: 250 Land holdings: Over 1.25 million acres Oil production: 3,500 barrels a day Processing capabilities: 20 million ft3 a day of natural gas Clients: Residents and businesses in seven states Website: East Resources is the largest oil producer in the Appalachian Basin, producing approximately 3,500 barrels of oil daily. They continue to actively develop acreage positions in all of its operating areas. East Resources has experienced tremendous growth and its small IT department was working hard to keep up with the pace of data growth. The three-person team was managing a demanding array of databases and building servers for data-intensive applications including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, GIS software, mapping tools, billing software, and Munsys software that provide an interface for many of the other applications. The amount of data had doubled in size during 2008 from the previous year and was expected to double again in In addition to this high growth, the company rapidly increased non-it headcount by 17 percent to support exploration and drilling efforts in development of Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian Basin, which may contain enough natural gas to supply the U.S. for 20

2 Now, NEC is the heart of our data center. years. It was a shift that put even more strain on their systems through lots of new data. A single 3-D set of seismic data can be 4 to 5 gigabytes, explains Jason McNutt, IT Manager for East Resources. To meet their storage needs, East Resources initially had just three, 1TB Dell PowerVault 745N NAS devices, which sufficed for a short time. They filled up fast, says McNutt. Then East Resources started using Dell servers with six hard drives apiece, which they thought would last. Those ran out of space in one year. We had to buy more and more servers, which led to more management overhead, laments McNutt. Eventually, the company was operating fifteen different devices, and increasing hardware devices by more than 13 percent per year. They were also using EMC Retrospect and a Dell TL8000 autoloader for backup, which filled up 3TB in just three weeks. The environment was a challenge to manage, the backup process overhead was time consuming, and there was no respite in sight. Maintaining so many systems was a timeconsuming process that taxed the small IT department, and running out of storage capacity was not an option. It was clear that the infrastructure needed to dramatically change to enable the company to go to the next level. The Solution McNutt and Rob Neal, Systems Administrator, began looking for a centralized solution to transform the department from one that was heavily reliant on physical systems and resources to a more virtual and, therefore, more flexible system. Partly because the department is staffed so lean, they wanted less physical boxes to maintain along with more speed and efficiency in the management of systems. The IT team recognized the need to upgrade their technology infrastructure to one that was scalable to grow along with their business demands. The existing system was too laborintensive and was pushing the performance envelope to meet existing data needs, much less future requirements. East Resources also wanted to consolidate first: they needed a solution to bring all the data together, reduce the number of physical servers, save space, speed up deployment and facilitate deployment of multiple operating systems. We had lots of data on various servers and needed to consolidate for management purposes, so we wanted to go with a SAN, recounts McNutt. The data backup approach also needed to be restructured appropriately for their improved infrastructure. Once East Resources made the decision to move to a centralized solution, they began reading reviews of the many systems on the market and looking at technology websites for in-depth comparisons. Like most companies operating in today s economy, East Resources had a set budget number for their technology upgrade. East Resources wanted an enterprise-class system. We did not want to spend $300,000 on a SAN, but all of the products we found in our price range had single controllers, explains McNutt. Despite the budget constraints, the team investigated and compared enterprise-class systems from EMC, Dell EqualLogic, and others against their SAN criteria. NEC valued reseller StoreHouse Technologies introduced East Resources to the NEC D-Series, which was in their price range. McNutt and Neal discovered additional information in their research. We learned that NEC was manufacturing products for EMC and RAID Inc., says McNutt. The NEC product has impressive features. It s comparable to the EMCs and the EqualLogics, and the reviews on the product are very good. Page 2 of 5

3 NEC blew the competition out of the water. SAN Criteria: Dual controllers Dual power supplies Multi-pathing Snapshot capabilities High performance; small footprint Meets budget East Resources thought they found a winner and wanted a closer look. We realized that it was essentially the same as the EMC, declares Neal. NEC s No Risk Storage 100 percent satisfaction guarantee program encouraged East Resources to bring in the product and try it in their own environment. We started testing and we were very satisfied it was everything we were looking for in a SAN, exclaims McNutt. Results In just three months, East Resources evaluated, selected, and installed new systems, which eliminated the challenges of server-based storage by deploying the power of NEC. Now, NEC is the heart of our data center, says McNutt. East Resources is running Oracle, SQL Server, an accounting database, inventory management software, Microsoft Exchange, as well as GIS and Mapping programs on the SAN. East Resources is running VMware in production and can now take better advantage of its capabilities. IT can automatically bring up a virtual machine on another host quickly in the event of trouble or when provisioning a new server. Because we are running on a SAN, the system automatically brings up a replacement virtual machine on another host, explains Neal. As far as redundancy goes, if a server fails, the IT team can bring up another one in mere seconds. Adds McNutt, The end user won t even see the drop in service. We can lose an entire host and they won t know it. Before the NEC deployment, if a server needed to be rebooted, it took down other parts of the system, affecting the productivity of at least 40 people. NEC s technology has generated greater, faster performance than East Resources expected as well. McNutt says the NEC system enables the fastest database he s ever built: You can just see the data fly. In fact, the database moved 1.5 GB of data in 8 seconds, from the local drive to the SAN. The speed of copying files across the network has also increased, from between 900 MB per minute and 1.2 GB per minute to 2.5 GB per minute with the SAN. Because all of the software shares are now on the SAN, East Resources can deploy applications and build systems faster. East Resources relies heavily on the availability of the latest real-time data for its operational needs. Previously, refreshing the databases meant 45 to 90 minutes of downtime because of the interactions between all four databases. So, the refresh had to be done at night. Since the Oracle and SQL Server databases have been moved onto the SAN, East Resources is now able to refresh the databases in just five minutes and the data can be updated during the business day. McNutt says, Now, I m considering refreshing the databases twice daily. NEC s D-Series SAN Storage has quadrupled the speed of restoring desktops and laptops. The IT team is backing up and snapshotting laptops and desktops to the SATA drives of the SAN so they can quickly and easily image a replica of the latest backup, instead of going to tape backup. It saves time for both IT and the user. We ve actually had laptops run over by trucks, exclaims McNutt. Now we can get desktops and laptops up in two hours instead of eight. Page 3 of 5

4 It was everything we were looking for in a SAN. Server backup performance has also improved dramatically by using the SAN for disk-to-disk backup. We ve doubled the speed of backup, says McNutt. At one point we were getting 300 MB a minute off the backup server. Now we re getting 1200 to 1500 MB a minute. From a cost and budgeting standpoint, the ability to plan out technology purchases beyond five years has led to better financial decisions. I haven t been able to purchase a server that could last 5 years, but now I have SAN storage that can last for 5 years, reports McNutt. East has about 50 TB of raw capacity, and can continue to grow the system up to 144 TB of capacity.. Server sprawl and growth has stopped, which also eliminates the need to buy software and OS licenses for each system. Management time has also been greatly reduced. The IT team is fully supporting 160 people in addition to 30 servers (many of which virtual) across multiple locations. East Resources has gone from 19 separate servers in the datacenter to a virtualized environment of four VMware ESX physical hosts and one VCenter management server. Not only can they deploy the small staff to other projects, they are reducing power usage as well. Plus, the company plans to repurpose its older servers and use them as domain controllers in remote offices. Instead of having a staff of administrators, we can just have three people to support 160 users and 200 PCs as well as 30 servers, explains McNutt. Future Plans In addition to the tremendous business gains already realized with NEC s D-Series SAN Storage, East Resources is excited about the ability to start a mapping project which until, now, had been on hold. The drilling and exploration company has a repository of old, valuable paper maps. Some of these documents are original, hand-drawn Pennzoil maps dating from the early 1800s that are very fragile. Thanks to the additional capacity of the NEC SAN, East Resources plans to digitize these maps so that they will be available to all of the employees and preserved for the future. The company also plans to accelerate its business. Projects were put on hold because of lack of storage, relates McNutt. The company plans to move a robust human resources database online, something they were unable to do with their previous system. And they plan to begin a data warehousing project, to enable users to more easily search a catalogue to find their desired data. About StoreHouse Technologies San Diego-based StoreHouse Technologies, offers data storage solutions for intensive and standard business environments that require uninterrupted access to missioncritical information. The company is known for implementing pragmatic solutions aimed at preventing downtime as well as providing absolute responsiveness to its customers. Page 4 of 5

5 About NEC s Dynamic IT Infrastructure NEC s D-Series SAN Storage is part of NEC s Dynamic IT Infrastructure. Along with NEC s broad range of services the NEC Dynamic IT Infrastructure provides an ideal platform for virtualization, consolidation and business continuity and is ideal for driving greater value and efficiencies in solutions for physical security, law enforcement, emergency response, travel and entertainment, education, high performance computing, and business. This type of infrastructure allows IT organizations to move forward confidently and meet changing and growing business needs in an efficient manner. To learn more about NEC s Dynamic IT infrastructure, visit About NEC Corporation of America Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is a leading provider of innovative IT, network and communications products and solutions for service carriers, Fortune 1000 and SMB businesses across multiple vertical industries, including Healthcare, Government, Education and Hospitality. NEC Corporation of America delivers one of the industry s broadest portfolios of technology solutions and professional services, including unified communications, wireless, voice and data, managed services, server and storage infrastructure, optical network systems, microwave radio communications and biometric security. NEC Corporation of America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a global technology leader with operations in 30 countries and more than $42 billion in revenues. For more information, please visit NEC Corporation of America 2880 Scott Blvd. Santa Clara, CA sales@necam.com NEC Corporation of America. All rights reserved. Specifications subject to change without notice. NEC is a registered trademark and Empowered by Innovation is a trademark of NEC Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. CS128-1_1009 Page 5 of 5 NEC Corporation of America