“Our core competency at Juneau Exploration is oil and gas exploration. We utilize state-of-the-art seismic technology to locate underground oil and natural gas deposits. We deliver drillable on and off shore prospect sites to our partners.  My priority is to develop and foster our seismic processing capabilities and lead the implementation of seismic techniques to expose the oil and gas pay zones.

“To many people, ’striking oil’ will conjure up visions of old movies and mavericks on horseback. But my job presents both a scientific and a management challenge. I need to bring together the right people, technology and resources to accomplish our goals in a timely fashion.

“Technology is always an issue. In my experience, the computing environment either enables you to get your job done or it hinders you from accomplishing your goal. Reliable systems and components with strong monitoring tools help to ensure our success.
 
“Our data center power and cooling environment must be clean and reliable in order to get the job done. Unfortunately, we are located in a rural environment where power conditions are inconsistent and often erratic. Summer thunderstorms in our area of east Texas often lead to power outages. Downtime caused by power failures can compound project delays until our window of opportunity closes. Repeated power failures can result in millions of dollars of lost opportunity. Our network must be bulletproof in order to ensure that we meet our financial objectives for the year.

Harsh Data Center Environment
 “We are using Linux-based personal computer clusters for time and depth imaging of seismic 3-D data volumes. Clusters are often considered a low cost computing option, but many companies overlook the associated costs of power and air conditioning. These costs can equal or exceed the cost of the cluster itself.
 
“At any given time we have nearly 150 CPUs going full speed, which can quickly raise the temperature 10-14 degrees in our 500 square foot computer center. An undetected air conditioning failure could push temperatures to destructive levels. Juneau needed a power and cooling solution as well as the ability to quickly and easily expand the cluster as needed to meet our changing project goals.

High Reliability, Easy Maintenance
“We researched power and cooling solutions and discovered that APC offered a reliable, cost-effective alternative to traditional suppliers of high-end data center power and air conditioning equipment.
 
“At first, we were only looking for APC to provide simple cost-effective systems with good monitoring tools. Working with our local reseller, Houston Information Team, LLC (www.houit.com, email: sales@houit.com) we were able to learn more about the new InfraStruXure® system, and we came to appreciate its integrated power and cooling approach. In fact, Houston Information Team was key in helping us to design and implement the solution. 

“The InfraStruXure was more cost-effective than other competitor’s solutions because of its unique, scalable, pay-as-you-grow architecture. The self-contained power and air, housed in the same rack enclosures as our systems and networking gear, reduces the need for expensive outside service and maintenance work. The system’s modular design is flexible enough to adapt to our system and network infrastructure as needed without having to forfeit our initial investment. The system’s ability to monitor power and temperature at the rack level helps us to avoid downtime.
 
“Compared to some of the competitor’s air and power solutions I’ve worked with in the past, InfraStruXure’s ease of installation, maintenance, and monitoring is clearly superior. We are now powering and cooling two 32-node SGI Origin 2000 computer servers, an HDS disk subsystem, and a 144-CPU Linux cluster with APC UPS and APC computer room air conditioners.
 
“Since installation, we have stayed up and running without a hitch through five recent local power outages. Our InfraStruXure and our generator have saved us from many days of downtime and lost effort, allowing us to stay on schedule and to meet and exceed our obligations for the year."