Techem builds scalable, tough business solution based on Linux on POWER with SAP and IBM

Auf Deutsch

Techem specializes in recording and allocating billing data on energy, water and cooling consumption. With subsidiaries and trading partners in more than 25 countries and over 2,500 employees worldwide, some 7.5 million households and almost 700,000 client companies use Techem systems. Total annual sales are €523 million, and the company is a world leader in radio metering devices.

Rapid business growth has produced an equally rapid increase in business transactions and data volumes, and existing systems were reaching their capacity limits. The Techem team wanted to extend the power and functionality of its SAP software by selecting a flexible, highly scalable IT infrastructure that would offer a very resilient landscape with full disaster protection.

Ralf Schumacher, Group Leader, Commercial and Distributive Systems, explains, “Techem is expanding very fast and absorbing other companies. It is essential to be able to integrate and run their business operations and transactions on an easily scalable system, which helps us reduce costs and build a unified view of the company.”

Linux on POWER offers freedom

Techem chose to review its SAP software landscape, selecting a comprehensive suite of SAP applications including SAP ERP, SAP CRM, SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence and SAP NetWeaver Portal. The ERP applications include sales and distribution, financial accounting, controlling, materials management, warehouse management and asset accounting.

Knowing that current systems would be unable to support the new software and transaction loads, the team embarked on a complete infrastructure refresh. The aim was to provide a foundation for business growth, and help reduce operational and software license expenses by creating a unified server platform strategy to support both existing AIX-based applications and as an intermediate step towards migrating to SAP software on Linux. Once the migration was complete, Techem would be able to take advantage of the IBM Advanced POWER Virtualization (APV) technologies to consolidate its server and processor footprint, which would help reduce operational costs.

“We chose an ambitious migration path, covering three version upgrades in SAP software and simultaneously moving to the Linux operating system, which would give us the freedom to choose the best hardware platform,” says Ralf Schumacher.

After reviewing two possible hardware vendors, Techem chose to replace its IBM RS/6000 SP with a new IBM System p model 570 and to upgrade an existing p5-570 from four to eight processors. The company has subsequently expanded the new servers to a 16-way configuration. With the increased processing capacity shared across all the logical partitions using the advanced virtualization capabilities of the POWER5+ technologies, Techem has created a highly flexible, resilient IT infrastructure.

“The IBM servers provide a well-known architecture and very competitive price points. The combination of reliability, availability, ease of maintenance and the all-important virtualization made Linux on POWER the right choice for Techem,” says Rüdiger Schenk, Unix System Administrator.

Flexible, secure virtualized platform

During the migration project, each p570 server was configured with multiple logical partitions running several instances of the IBM AIX 5L operating system and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 operating system concurrently. This setup enabled the existing SAP applications to be systematically migrated from the original AIX environment onto the latest AIX 5L level, upgrade the database and SAP software to the target levels and then migrate to the Linux partitions. The ability of IBM POWER5+ processor-based systems to run more than one operating system and multiple LPARs within a single physical server offered Techem key advantages over other hardware and operating system solutions, enabling simplified consolidation of multiple applications to the new Linux on POWER platform.

The System p5 servers utilize Dynamic Logical Partitions (DLPARs), Micro-Partitioning and Virtual I/O features. The SAP software components are running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 operating system entirely.

By selecting Linux on POWER, Techem is able to take advantage of IBM virtualization technologies, enabling compute resources to be allocated to partitions in increments of as little as one hundredth of a processor (one-tenth of a processor being the minimum size). This flexibility allows Techem to exploit its systems as fully as possible, reducing the need for additional hardware expenditure by maximizing existing capabilities. This is the key success factor for projects with changing demands on hardware resources.

Comprehensive data storage solution

The Techem solution is one of the largest SAP software installations on Linux on POWER to date, and uses a comprehensive set of IBM and EMC products to complement and manage the system landscape. This includes IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for ERP and IBM Tivoli System Automation for Multiplatforms.

The storage environment for the new SAP system is based on a SAN built with ten IBM System Storage SAN switches and two EMC Symmetrix High End Storage Systems, offering a total capacity of 60 TB. Techem uses IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) software to provide virtualized storage management.

For company-wide data backups, Techem installed IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V5 software. The Tivoli Storage Manager software manages daily incremental backups of data from the SAP software environment to two IBM 3494 Tape Library devices equipped with ten IBM 3592 Tape Drives.

Superb service and support

IT-Services and Solutions GmbH, an IBM Global Technology Services affiliate, worked closely with Techem to help design, implement and commission the software and hardware, from original vendor comparison tests through to system go-live. Developers from several product teams within IBM co-operated very closely to solve challenges arising in the complex customer environment during migration and test phases at Techem. The system supports a total of some 1,800 named users accessing large data volumes: 1.1TB in the production system, 380GB in the customer relationship management application, and another 140GB in the portal.

Leander Dahlmann, DB Administrator, comments, “Techem wanted to have a homogeneous platform for its SAP applications, including the underlying database. IT-Services and Solutions has successfully delivered the first Oracle 10g on Linux on POWER implementation, and they have delivered a first-class solution for Techem. The implementation demonstrates the excellent performance and high scalability of Oracle 10g and SAP NetWeaver on Linux on POWER platform.

“By migrating to this release we were also able to achieve savings in storage use by archiving older data. Taking advantage of IBM virtualization technologies, Techem has also been able to reduce the number of Oracle database instances, which has helped reduce the total license fees – a significant cost saving.

“The IBM, EMC and SAP solution fully met Techem’s requirements, especially concerning a guaranteed future to support our highly acquisitive expansion strategy”

Handling rapid business growth

Despite the radical nature of the change – new operating system, new SAP software, new servers – there was no need for user training, as the application interfaces remained the same.

Frank Bartnitzki, Linux System Administrator, concludes, “The Linux on POWER solution gives Techem the ability to handle rapid growth in business with a flexible, scalable architecture. The IBM System p5 servers running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SAP software allow us to reduce operational expenses, integrate new companies into the group rapidly and efficiently, and manage a dynamically growing environment easily and cost-effectively.”