CEPCOLSA
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Serban Group EN
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Scenario
CEPCOLSA, a subsidiary of CEPSA S.A.U., began their activities in Colombia in 2001. Throughout these years, the Company has carried out numerous exploratory and production activities (seismic acquisition and exploratory wells); in the geological basins of the Llanos; Lower, Middle and Upper Valley of Magdalena and Catatumbo, located in the departments of Meta, Casanare, Cundinamarca, Santander, Tolima, Huila and Vichada.
One of these contracts corresponds to the exploration, production and development of the CARACARA block, operated in association with ECOPETROL; located in the basin of the Eastern Llanos, in the municipalities of Puerto Gaitán (Meta) and Maní (Casanare). It is a stable field, with a daily production of 20,000 barrels from its stations Jaguar, Toro Sentado and Caracara Sur; the crude is transported through a pipeline to the Maní Station
On the other hand, they have the Casanare projects, located in the municipalities of Aguazul, Maní, Tauramena, Paz de Ariporo and Yopal; some are in the exploration phase, others in development and/or production. These are fields with high growth potential, in the process of being endorsed by the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH).
Its administrative headquarters is located in Bogotá, it has a team of 240 direct collaborators and approximately 60 temporary ones, including contractors and consultants. And in the field operation, Meta and Casanare, we find approximately 200 employees.
Initial situation
The IT area is aimed at supporting the Company's processes at a transversal level, throughout the Bogotá and Campo (Meta and Casanare) operation, and at making business processes more efficient.
Six years ago, the Company's corporate and business growth began, therefore, the technological platform had to be adapted and strengthened with the support of SERBAN GROUP as a supplier throughout the data storage and information line.
Solution
SERBAN GROUP has accompanied CEPCOLSA in several processes. Our support starts with the migration and storage of data and information. The first storage equipment functioned as NAS (Network Attach Storage),it was a 2020 FAS from NetApphence, the migration to shared storage is made, and the environment was segmented by making a SAN (Storage Area Network) to take advantage of the capabilities offered by the NetApp solution, being able to handle NAS and SAN storage.In this way, a SAN structure was developed for storage, databases, the virtual area and high-speed communication; and a development on NAS that is derived for the file server, for the technical part and for the administrative part of the Company.
When the corporate and business growth of CEPCOLSA began, it brought with it a growth in business needs and Back Office, that is why investment in technology grew. FAS 2020 was left as a storage structure for the entire administrative issue and was migrated to the Core business segment, which comprised the technical part of the Exploration area to a NetApp FAS solution 3240 proposed by SERBAN GROUP; this only in the storage part.
Then, the entire Backup structure was put in place and backup copies, available with the Symantec Backup Exec solution, were implemented. The necessary physical infrastructure addressed to the structured SAN was also defined. A library of 50 tapes and a robot with a drive to make automated backups were acquired, this in the physical part. In addition to all the consulting for the management of specialized software for Backup, achieving centralized management. There was a progressive increase in space and Backup so the library was swapped for a robot with two drives.
Today there are more than 30 Tera Bytes (TB) of effective storage available, the business need is high, the seismic interpretation cubes consume many resources and all go to central storage. A single project can be between 100 to 200 gigabytes in size. The Company has a technical team of approximately 50 people, including interpreters, geologists, geophysicists and petrophysicists; which implies a high volume of information for storage.
Benefits
The team is a data structure manager; SAN, NAS and back up are the 3 verticals of SERBAN GROUP, which support CEPCOLSA in storage solutions.
Solutions that show the improvements in the service going towards the critical areas of the business and the support areas have been very positive; NetApp technology offers the Company benefits that generate value, such as:
- Savings in the amount of space available in effective TB; if these solutions were not available, the amount of it would have to be increased.
- Easy access for users without requiring the IT area, since they can access and recover a damaged or lost file; this improves the basic maintenance operation by virtue of being more efficient.
With regards to the technical part, 3 years ago when the company switched to the FAS 3240 solution supplied by SERBAN GROUPprovided support and review of the project, and both companies jointly reviewed what was the best alternative in storage that NetApp had developed for Schlumberger; manufacturer of software Petrel that the company uses as a basis for its seismic exploration. The solution was reviewed in detail and almost tailored so that the software worked optimally, with this the best result could be obtained; far superior to any other solution on the market.
In a span of 5 years, the company went from having 3 TB of effective storage capacity, to having 30 TB, 6 times more than its initial capacity. It started with the backup drive storage robot, then moved to a two-drive robot and grew from 4 to 30 servers, accompanied by SERBAN GROUP in a virtual environment. All this growth has been accompanied by partner SERBAN GROUP.