Geophysical Development Corporation Deploys Panasas and Achieves 10x Increase in Linux Cluster Performance

Panasas ActiveScale Storage Cluster Beats Competition in Throughput and Performance; Out-Of-The-Box Solution Eliminates Costly Deployment to Maximize Return on Investment

FREMONT, Calif. (January 10, 2006) – Panasas, Inc., today announced that Geophysical Development Corporation (GDC), a leading provider of global solutions in seismic data processing and exploration, has deployed the Panasas ActiveScale Storage Cluster™ to fully maximize the return on investment from the company’s Linux cluster. The Panasas solution boosted cluster performance by 10x and reduced the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) by eliminating several costly management burdens for system administrators.

GDC has developed a world-class suite of seismic processing capabilities and exploration services for their global oil and gas customer base to help them more quickly achieve their business objectives. GDC deployed a Linux cluster with direct-attached storage to handle the heavy compute demands of 4D imaging processes. The existing storage system significantly impeded cluster performance and costly system management challenges forced IT staff to continuously tweak the servers to maintain stability. After careful evaluation of high-speed storage alternatives, GDC selected the Panasas Storage Cluster.

“Our application suite places a great deal of pressure on the storage system because we are handling terabytes of data in essentially random order,” said Richard Verm, vice president of research and technology at GDC. “When we started looking at new storage solutions, most only improved performance in either random I/O or data throughput. Panasas was the only company that delivered exceptional performance in both required areas, which gave us the 10x the performance increase.”

Like other commercial customers, GDC was able to quickly take advantage of Panasas’ integrated hardware/software solution to prevent a costly, time-consuming implementation and reduce the overall costs in its Linux cluster environment almost immediately. The Panasas Storage Cluster combines a next-generation, parallel file system and an object-storage architecture that is perfectly tuned to deliver outstanding performance right out of the box. A single global namespace offers users rapid and virtually limitless scalability, with near linear scaling in performance as more capacity is added.

“The Panasas system dropped into our environment with minimal effort on our part, and provided us with a single console from which to mange our clustered storage,” continued Verm. “By eliminating costly management and deployment issues, Panasas storage has allowed us to free up our administrators so that they can focus on more high-value projects that will ultimately benefit our customers while lowering our costs.”

“In the highly competitive oil and gas industry, where project delays or inaccurate decisions that result from ineffective HPC solutions could potentially cost companies millions of dollars, customers such as GDC and others around the globe continue to put their trust in Panasas,” said Victor Perez, president and CEO at Panasas. “We are continuing to build on our success as the leader in clustered storage for the oil and gas industry by illustrating the tangible benefits achieved through the deployment of the Panasas Storage Cluster across a wide range of customers.”

About Panasas

Panasas, Inc. helps companies accelerate the speed and accuracy of their business decisions, leading to real world breakthroughs that improve people’s lives. Panasas enables customers to maximize the benefits of Linux clusters by breaking down the storage bottleneck created by legacy network storage technologies. Through the delivery of the company’s Storage Cluster platform, which combines industry-standard hardware with the company’s ActiveScale File System and professional services, the company has become the established leader in object-based, clustered storage. Panasas’ headquarters are in Fremont, Calif. with development facilities in Pittsburgh, Pa. For more information, please visit www.panasas.com.

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