MARLBORO, Mass. — September 19, 2006 — Egenera, Inc., today announced that Emory University has migrated its Oracle9i Database running on proprietary RISC/UNIX servers to Oracle 10g RAC running on the Egenera® BladeFrame® system. The project, which would have taken three to six months if done in-house, was completed in just 10 days by a joint team of Oracle and Egenera integration experts through the Oracle-on-Egenera 10g Accelerator Service.
Emory University had multiple objectives for the migration. With space at a premium, server consolidation was a priority. It was also expected that consolidating servers would simplify infrastructure, since fewer machines and supporting components would be required. At the same time, high availability—which would mean more equipment, not less, with a traditional architecture—was required. Finally, database performance needed to go up while total cost of ownership needed to come down.
The single solution to these aggressive goals was the utility computing environment created by running Oracle 10g RAC on the Egenera system. Whereas 14 RISC servers could have been needed to run Oracle9i —without high availability—just six Egenera Processing BladeTM modules are used in the Oracle 10g RAC deployment, including a single blade shared by the development and production clusters for automated failover. What's more, this shared blade can be automatically added to either cluster based on processor utilization to safeguard database performance.
Performance has also been enhanced through a combination of Egenera's unique Processing Area Network (PAN) architecture and the 64-bit Intel® processors chosen for the deployment. Oracle 10g RAC is running on two-way Processing Blades containing 3.60 GHz Intel XeonTM EM64T processors, which enable the large memory configurations needed for database applications.
"Running Oracle 10g RAC on the Egenera system with 64-bit Intel technology has achieved every objective for our database migration," said Betty Troup, Director of Operational and Infrastructure Services, Emory University. "In terms of performance, we've seen a 50 percent improvement in batch process time. We've also significantly reduced physical complexity, lowering the number of components required for a high availability configuration by 75 percent. Total cost of ownership, including both capital and operational expenses over three years, has been cut in half. The robustness of the integrated solution also gave us the confidence to run databases on Linux® for the first time."
Troup continued, "Our decision to engage the Oracle-on-Egenera 10g Accelerator Service was equally critical to the success of this project. In just 10 days, our database was migrated, our development and production environments were running, our people were trained, and we had a customized set of documentation. Doing this work ourselves would have easily taken three to six months. Plus, the Egenera and Oracle experts on our team optimized the integration, enabling the secure resource sharing so essential to meeting our goals around complexity and costs. Considering the man hours we saved and the incredible reduction in time to market, the Accelerator Service has had a valuable impact on our business."
"All our Professional Services offerings—including the Oracle-on-Egenera Accelerator Service—seek to quickly deliver a quantifiable solution and transfer knowledge for the client to be self-sufficient," explained Scott Clark, vice president of Egenera Professional Services. "To achieve this, we've broken from the traditional pyramid approach of a few experts surrounded by many billable junior resources learning on the job. Instead, we staff only experienced professionals from top to bottom. We are gratified that Emory University is benefiting both from our technology and our services portfolio." "Intel Xeon processors provide the built-in standards, stability and scalability needed for mission-critical datacenter applications such as Oracle 10g RAC," said Boyd Davis, general manager, Intel. "By choosing to use the 64-bit Intel platform for this significant project, Emory University has been able to develop a solution that achieved their objectives for server consolidation, performance and costs."
The Oracle-on-Egenera Accelerator Service is a fixed scope/price engagement wherein skilled personnel from Oracle Consulting and Egenera Professional Services expedite the implementation and deployment of the Oracle10g RAC grid software infrastructure onto the Egenera system. Best practices simplify the complexity and cost of upgrading or implementing Oracle 10g Database on Egenera's architecture. Field-proven with joint customers, this turnkey solution also minimizes risk, speeds time to market, and optimizes performance and availability. For more information, contact oracle@egenera.com.
About Egenera, Inc.
Egenera is a global leader in delivering enterprise-computing solutions that simplify datacenter operations and infrastructure. The Egenera BladeFrame system simplifies the datacenter with an innovative server architecture specifically designed to reduce complexity and enable IT to respond rapidly to business requirements. Market-leading enterprises around the world trust the Egenera BladeFrame system to run their most important business applications and achieve higher resource utilization, faster application time to market and lower total cost of ownership. Headquartered in Marlboro, Mass., Egenera has offices worldwide. For more information visit www.egenera.com, call 508-858-2600 or send email to info@egenera.com.
Egenera, Egenera stylized logos and Processing Blade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Egenera, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Intel and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other product names, service marks and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.
