The world's number one oil producer has implemented a sophisticated IBM storage solution, the SAN-based Enterprise Storage Servers (ESS) solution, which allows it to cut costs and manage its computing environment more effectively.

Saudi Aramco announced the successful completion of the migration to a sophisticated IBM storage solution that will allow it to manage its storage needs more efficiently.
The new SAN-based ESS system was implemented for Saudi Aramco in record time by IBM and Saudi Business Machines (SBM), its general marketing and services representative in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Aramco is a fully-integrated petroleum enterprise, with operations in exploration, production, refining, marketing and international shipping and is also a major natural gas producer.
Building on a legacy that dates back nearly 70 years, Saudi Aramco today leads the world in crude oil production and exports, and is the top exporter of natural gas liquids (NGLs). 
The organisation was looking to migrate from its existing storage solution that used Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) direct attach disks to a more advanced and scalable system that would meet its requirement of 350 TB of usable storage using RAID 5 (464TB RAW), as well as considerably reduce its operation and maintenance costs. 
IBM and SBM worked closely with Saudi Aramco in the planning, designing, implementation, testing and performance tuning of the SAN-based IBM solution, which included ten ESS 800 'Shark' models with 146 GB hard drives, Storwatch Expert storage management software and two Brocade M12 switches.
The new solution provides consolidated, simplified storage with faster backup time, improved availability and less required maintenance. 
The IBM solution was chosen over one other competing solution after extensive benchmarking by Saudi Aramco.
The selection of IBM was on the basis of the reliability, performance and pricing structure of the new ESS 800 'Sharks', the openness, capacity and reliability of its SAN switches combined with IBM and SBM's long standing relationship with Saudi Aramco on providing quality service and ongoing support. 
The ESS 'Sharks' had also been previously tested at IBM's SAN lab in Mainz, Germany following a 'try and buy' agreement with Saudi Aramco.
'We chose IBM's superior ESS storage technology to be the cornerstone of our business operations because it offers the performance, scalability and advanced functionality we require to manage the high performance needs of seismic data processing.  The new solution can scale to add Petabytes of disk at any time,' explains Saudi Aramco. 
'With the new SAN solution designed and implemented by IBM and SBM, we are confident that we can allocate storage efficiently and enable new applications as needed.'
Last August, IBM and SBM organised a workshop with Saudi Aramco at their headquarters where IBM worldwide experts in Linux, storage and the oil and gas industry from Mainz, Houston and London gathered to review Saudi Aramco's future storage requirements and helped IBM and SBM to develop a storage solution that met these requirements in a very short time frame. 
''Our main challenge was to transfer Saudi Aramco's existing storage architecture from the previous SSA direct attach disks to the IBM SAN-based Shark disks in a record time frame, which we successfully managed by working closely with IBM's High Performance Computing (HPC) group and eServer pSeries team that helped us in performance tuning so that we can meet the performance requirements of Saudi Aramco,'' said SBM. 
''The new solution simplifies Saudi Aramco's storage management and reduces the level of maintenance needed during off hours.'' 

Data Transaction
Designed to be the most versatile and cost-efficient storage server in its class, the IBM ESS 800 'Shark' offers industry-leading data transaction-processing performance, which is crucial for an organisation such as Saudi Aramco that has heavy transaction demands. 
It also has superior data back-up capabilities, a significant remote copy performance for disaster recovery and unplanned business disruption, as well as 'Smart' software technology introduced as part of IBM's initiative to create intelligent IT systems capable of managing, protecting and healing themselves automatically.
'With our business needs changing rapidly, we have to be very aware of change management. We have to be ready to change quickly, so IT solutions have to be flexible and easy to scale.
''This is one important reason for choosing the IBM SAN solution. Not only is it simple; it's also based on open standards so that it supports both Linux and General Parallel File System (GPFS) simultaneously,' said Saudi Aramco.
'By implementing the IBM storage solution, not only will Saudi Aramco increase the efficiency of its data storage, but it will also gain the ability to easily handle the organisation's growing storage needs.
Saudi Aramco can now plan, operate and manage its environment more effectively because of the consolidated storage and the centralised management tools.
''The flexibility offered by the IBM ESS will also save Saudi Aramco staff a lot of time in running its computing infrastructure,' said Jeff Maslen, storage channel development manager, IBM Middle East.  
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. 
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