1

Expanding Maritime Remote

Condition Monitoring Firm Finds a
New Storage Paradigm

21
st
Century Mayday Call Answered
ESRG, a data analysis and remote
monitoring technology firm, had begun to
experience serious problems managing
storage of growing data sets. The company
provides real-time equipment analytics to
the commercial maritime and defense
naval sectors.
Their first attempt to solve the problem
involved purchasing a NetApp FAS2200,
which worked well but quickly ran out of
space, leaving them back at square one.
After finding it would be prohibitively
expensive to add a disk shelf to the
NetApp system, they investigated other
options that fit their budget and need for
scalability. The Stax StorCore, an
enterprise-level software-defined storage
platform based on open-source ZFS
technology and powered by NexentaStor,
fits these needs. The storage solution
provided was easily scaled as budget and
demand required over the next two years.
Developed by Bothell, WA-based Silicon
Mechanics, the zStax StorCore line of
unified storage appliances is built on
industry-standard hardware, and use a
software-defined storage model. The
highly scalable, modular approach of zStax
appliances will easily support ESRGs
growing software as a service (SaaS)
business requirements.
Real-time inventory management and
analytics
ESRG supports remote condition
monitoring and analytics for assets in the
commercial maritime, offshore oil and gas,
and naval defense sectors. ESRGs
OstiaEdge Monitoring Suite platform
enables owners, managers, and operators
to use the real-time data generated by
sensors in onboard equipment to make
better maintenance and operations
decisions, both onboard and onshore.
OstiaEdges automated analytics enable
optimization of fuel and energy
consumption, increased reliability and
uptime, reduction of maintenance costs,
identification of potential issues prior to
failure, and automation of data collection
for regulatory purposes.
Predictive equipment health analytics
identify issues before failure, enabling
operators to move from scheduled
maintenance to as-needed condition-
based maintenance (CBM) to avoid
downtime, reduce costs, and improve
customer satisfaction.
OstiaEdges automated equipment health analytics use real time
data to make better maintenance and operations decisions.




2

Expanding Maritime Remote
Condition Monitoring Firm Finds a
New Storage Paradigm

Data is collected from hundreds of sensors
on equipment typically found on marine
vessels. For example, as the data analytics
leader for the US Navy surface fleet remote
monitoring program, ESRG collects sensor
data from about 115 US Navy assets.
Information can be collected and
performance evaluated on virtually any
equipment that has a pump, valve, or
sensor, including gas turbine engines, air
conditioning plants, or water distillation
systems.
The search for scalable, affordable
storage to support development and
business continuity
ESRG IT Manager John Schleigh explains
that, as ESRGs monitoring capabilities
grew, so too did their databases. The
company began to experience problems
managing its growing data sets. Initially,
they had been reading in a modest set of
customer assets, but soon had to read a
greater number of assets more frequently,
and the infrastructure they had in place
was not adequate to keep up with the
exploding rate of growth.
We had no way of knowing what we were
about to receive, said Schleigh. We were
hitting about 5 to10 gigabytes of growth a
day. For many companies, that doesnt
sound like much, but back then we
couldnt manage the growth easily. We
went from a 20-gigabyte Oracle database
to topping out at over a terabyte within
two to three months. We were running out
of storage and had to find a better
solution.
Aside from its need to use the data for its
core analytics, ESRGs developers needed
copies of the data to use during software
performance upgrades. With their existing
system, copying the data took days, and
they did not have sufficient storage
capacity to create all of the copies
required. At the same time, ESRGs SaaS
efforts began to grow quickly, which only
compounded their existing storage
problems. A final concern was
guaranteeing recovery of information if
there was a hardware failure.
To alleviate their short-term storage
deficit, ESRG repurposed an aging Dell
Precision desktop PC to run NexentaStor
CE (community edition), a NAS/SAN
software platform that runs on any
industry-standard hardware. This worked
well and relieved much of the pressure,
also enabling greater access to data by the
development team. They were able to
replicate data with snapshots and
replication volumes without the overhead
normally involved in copying a huge
amount of data.
These improvements showed ESRG the
benefits of a more modern storage
As the number of assets monitored grew, so did ESRGs need for a
scalable storage solution.




3

Expanding Maritime Remote
Condition Monitoring Firm Finds a
New Storage Paradigm

solution that would address their current
and future storage needs.
ESRG then worked with a NetApp vendor,
explaining that they were in the beginning
stage of virtualizing their environment and
needed more storage. The vendor sold
them a Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS)
2020, which was initially more than
adequate for their needs. However,
according to Schleigh, We installed it
December 1
st
, and by January 1
st
it was
saturated and we had run out of IOPS. It
quickly became clear that a more scalable
and affordable solution was needed.
ESRG found that the cost to add a disk
shelf was more than they spent for the
original NetApp solution. Remembering
their recent positive experience with
NexentaStor, Schleigh sought out Steve
Scherer, a storage solutions expert, to
begin discussions on a cost-effective data
storage solution that would allow
scalability for the fast-growing firm.
Focusing on feature sets that would give
ESRG the most bang for their buck,
Scherer reviewed ESRGs requirements
and budget and presented a range of
suitable options.
ESRGs initial deployment used a warm
stand-by configuration, in which two
dual-CPU nodes were cabled into a shared
disk array. One of the nodes was powered
on and running an instance of
NexentaStor. The other node was powered
off, but had a pre-loaded instance of
NexentaStor that could be powered on in
the event of a node failure, limiting
downtime. The disk array featured 6
mirrored pairs of 2TB Seagate
Constellation ES SAS drives, providing
twice the capacity and higher throughput
than the legacy appliance. The industry-
standard hardware was easily scaled as
budget and demand required. For
instance, as storage volumes grew, the
need to increase the system cache grew, so
memory was easily doubled from 48GB to
96GB per node.
According to Scherer, ESRG required
hybrid storage pools and the ability to
queue up write operations to avoid
bottlenecks. ESRG runs a high-
performance Oracle database that requires
very high write IOPS, with low latency.
Scherer deployed high-performance, low-
latency Seagate Pulsar.2 SAS SSDs for
write cache. When a synchronous write
request is received, that write is
zStax StorCore scales easily to
meet growth requirements.




4

Expanding Maritime Remote
Condition Monitoring Firm Finds a
New Storage Paradigm

committed to the Seagate SSDs and later
flushed to the slower nearline SAS
spinning disks that comprise the capacity
of the storage. High volumes of small-
block write I/O can bring many storage
systems to their knees, so we use ultra-fast
and ultra-reliable Pulsar SSDs to handle
that write workload, says Scherer. He
adds, Seagate SSDs can also be leveraged
for read cache, holding the most
frequently accessed portions of the
database on solid state media for
extremely fast read access times.
With this solution, ESRG can also copy its
data instantly through the use of
snapshots, which can be replicated to
other nodes onsite and offsite. As
customers are paying closer attention to
business continuity and information
practices and policies, this feature has
become a huge advantage. Unlike legacy
storage systems, zStax storage appliances
provide snapshots at no additional cost, so
if there were a failure at one site, data and
applications can be brought up at another.
Development efforts are also facilitated by
creating clones of snapshots to
instantaneously provide developers with a
copy of the data. Maintaining customer
applications and standing up new
instances is now a process that only takes
them minutes to accomplish. Schleigh
explains that the storage device provided
by Silicon Mechanics allows ESRG
incredible flexibility and reliability
through coupling a wealth of features
delivered by ZFS and NexentaStor with
well-designed, cost-effective hardware.
zStax has the flexibility and portability to
support our development life cycle, says
Schleigh. Silicon Mechanics has provided
expert service and support for our
growing SaaS business, and we know we
can continue to grow with zStax.
About Silicon Mechanics
Silicon Mechanics, Inc. is an industry-
leading provider of rackmount server,
storage, and high-performance computing
solutions. Deploying the latest innovations
in hardware and software technology, we
work in collaboration with our customers
to design and build the most efficient, cost-
effective technology solution for their
needs. Our guiding principle, Expert
included, is our promise that reflects
our passion for complete customer
satisfaction, from server and component
selection to superior installation and
ongoing technical support. Silicon
Mechanics has been recognized as one of
the fastest growing companies in the
Greater Seattle Technology Corridor.
About ESRG
Established in 2000, ESRG provides
leading-edge data analysis and remote
monitoring technology. ESRG supports
the remote condition monitoring and
analytics for maritime assets in the
commercial maritime, offshore oil & gas
and naval defense sectors. ESRGs
OstiaEdge platform enables owners,
managers and operators to use the real-
time data generated by onboard
equipment to make better maintenance
and operations decisions, both onboard
and onshore.
Case Study made possible by:
SERVERS STORAGE HPC