Published on 22-Dec-2006
Validated on 01 May 2009
"The combination of Linux and the IBM System z9 EC servers provides an ideal platform for business-critical databases." - Klaus Bergmann, IBM Development Center, Böblingen, Germany
Customer:
Anonymous
Industry:
Professional Services
Deployment country:
Japan
Solution:
Linux, Optimizing IT, Security, Server Consolidation, Virtualization
Overview
A major international research institute needed its IT infrastructure to support 24x7 operations. Its core systems were spread across a number of different hardware platforms, leading to concerns about reliability, while administration and maintenance costs were high.
Business need:
To reduce costs and increase reliability, the institute planned to consolidate its Oracle database environment from distributed machines to a single platform. The goal was to process more than 1,000 transactions per second, with a maximum response time of a few seconds.
Solution:
Implemented two IBM zSeries® 990 mainframes, later upgrading to two IBM System z9™ Enterprise Class (EC) systems. The z9 EC mainframes each have 54 Integrated Facility for Linux® engines, running the institute’s Oracle 10g databases under SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.
Benefits:
High-performance hardware environment meets transaction and response-time targets; consolidated server environment helps reduce administrative workload; high availability supports business-critical applications 24x7.
Case Study
A major international research institute needed its IT infrastructure to support 24x7 operations. Its core systems were spread across a number of different hardware platforms, leading to concerns about reliability, while administration and maintenance costs were high.
The institute decided to consolidate its existing architecture to a single platform and needed to ensure that it could support a workload of more than 1,000 transactions per second.
Klaus Bergmann of the IBM Development Center at Böblingen, Germany, explains: “The institute came to us for a proposal, and we suggested running their Oracle databases under Linux on the IBM System z™ platform. We believed that the combination of high-end hardware and Linux would provide the performance and high availability they needed for their core applications, at a price that made business sense.”
Proving the case for Linux
While Linux is already running business-critical applications for many large enterprises, it is still a relatively new technology, and the institute was not ready to commit to the platform without proof that it could meet its needs.
“We were determined to demonstrate the viability of the solution, so we introduced the institute to a large financial institution in the USA which was already running Linux on the mainframe platform in a production environment,” says Klaus Bergmann. “We then ran extensive tests on an environment based on Oracle, Linux and IBM z/VM® on the mainframe and were able to demonstrate the superiority of the solution.”
The institute first worked with IBM to implement two IBM zSeries 990 mainframes, each with 32 Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) engines. Soon afterwards, Oracle released a new version of its database software—10g. Seeing an opportunity to increase performance further, the institute upgraded to two IBM System z9 Enterprise Class mainframes, each with 54 IFL processors. Each System z9 server is divided into four Logical Partitions (LPARs), each containing 14 shared logical processors.
“The inability of the previous version of Oracle to support 64-bit architecture had held the customer back,” explains Klaus Bergmann. “Once we were able to move them to the new architecture, they could really get the most out of the System z9 hardware.”
High availability
A major advantage of the System z9 platform for Oracle is its support for Real Application Clusters (RAC)—a feature which enables a single database instance to be shared between two or more nodes (in this case, Linux instances) to improve availability.
With its shared disks and ability to transfer data between virtual machines using virtual network connections called IBM HiperSockets™, the System z9 technology enables data transfer at memory speeds, improving the performance of the Oracle clusters.
The System z9 servers also support channel bonding—a feature that allows the platform to bond two physical network interfaces to one virtual interface. If one network adapter fails, the system automatically fails over to the other, again ensuring high system availability.
The institute also implemented a large number of fibre-connected SCSI disks to store the two main databases—one of which holds several terabytes, the other several tens of terabytes. IBM recommended using advanced features of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 to enable multiple connections (multipathing) between the storage hardware and the mainframes. Multipathing allows the environment to remain operational even if individual fibre-channel ports fail.
Benefits
The move to 64-bit Linux on the System z9 EC platform has enabled the institute to consolidate its IT infrastructure to just two physical servers, helping to reduce maintenance and administration costs, cut electricity and air-conditioning expenses and free up valuable space in the server room.
More importantly, the use of z9 EC features such as channel bonding, multipathing and HiperSockets helps to keep the Oracle databases functioning at peak efficiency, while helping to ensure that communications between the mainframe, application servers and user workstations remain open, supporting the institute’s 24-7 operations.
The high-performance z9 EC platform is able to process more than 1,000 transactions per second, and response times have been reduced to a few seconds—helping users to work more efficiently.
“This project has again convincingly demonstrated the benefits of using Linux on the mainframe in large enterprise environments,” concludes Klaus Bergmann. “The combination of Linux and the IBM System z9 EC servers provides an ideal platform for business-critical databases which need high performance and high availability to process large transactional volumes.”
Products and services used
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2006 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States December 2006 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, HiperSockets, System z, System z9, z9, z/VM and zSeries are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries or both. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products, programs or services do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference to an IBM product, program or service is not intended to imply that only IBM’s product, program or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program or service may be used instead. Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice. All client examples cited represent how some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Performance data for IBM and non-IBM products and services contained in this document was derived under specific operating and environmental conditions. The actual results obtained by any party implementing such products or services will depend on a large number of factors specific to such party’s operating environment and may vary significantly. IBM makes no representation that these results can be expected or obtained in any implementation of any such products or services. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS-IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. This publication is for general guidance only. Photographs may show design models.
