Case Study: DrillingInfo achieves scalable, high‑performance, low‑cost Big Data storage with Nexenta

Big Data Software-as-a-Service Provider for Oil and Gas Industry Strikes it Rich with Nexenta’s Software-Defined Storage

Drillinginfo is a Big Data SaaS provider for the oil and gas industry that had grown to ~900 TB of data and was ingesting 20–25 TB/month. Their legacy Fiber Channel + NFS storage was at capacity, suffering performance issues and inode exhaustion, and could not scale to meet VMware-driven growth or the company’s need for rapid, reliable expansion.

They deployed NexentaStor on Supermicro hardware (with IBM SVC/V5000 for FC) as a ZFS-based, highly available software-defined storage cluster. The new design separated object and block storage, removed inode limits, and optimized VMware support, delivering zero single points of failure, restored performance and operational peace of mind — all at about $416 per TB with no extra replication licensing, a cost well below industry averages.

DrillingInfo

Mike Couvillion

Chief Technology Officer, Drillinginfo