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According to IT manager, Ian Castleton, this exercise confirmed the credibility of HP and Linux as a lower-cost alternative to Sun Solaris.
"HP's cluster was simpler than the one offered by Sun. Moreover, the performance premium with the HP solution enabled us to switch to Oracle Standard Edition rather than Enterprise edition, which is less expensive to purchase and support," he commented.
Cost-effective platform
The proof of concept became the prelude to a full implementation, which is being carried out by Trinity Mirror after HP had helped to design and size the solution. A cluster of two HP ProLiant DL380 servers running Red Hat Linux is being installed, with a SAN based on an HP StorageWorks MSA 1000 system.
The use of Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC) enables the workload to be spread across servers without impacting resilience. This improves response speeds and boosts price/performance. In fact, Castleton estimates that the new infrastructure provides an overall performance gain of around 100 per cent.
Other advantages of the new architecture include smaller physical footprints and substantially reduced hardware maintenance costs. Trinity Mirror is now fully committed to Linux as a viable and cost-effective enterprise platform, capable of delivering high standards of reliability and scalability. Linux will become the preferred platform for all future UNIX projects.
"HP has demonstrated that it fully understands our business needs and can deliver reliable technology to power our business," said Castleton. "We will now be replacing the Sun servers in the Web and application tiers of the architecture with HP ProLiant systems running Linux."
Customer at a glance
- Industry sector - Media
- Name - Trinity Mirror
- Headquarters - London, UK
- Founded - 1999 (by merger)
- Telephone - +44 (0)20 7293 3000
- Number of employees - 11,500
- Annual revenues - £1.095 billion (€1.6 billion approx.)
- URL - www.trinitymirror.co.uk
Challenge
- Develop additional revenues through online services.
- Maintain profitability by cutting costs.
- Identify a lower-cost alternative to the Sun infrastructure used to support online operations.
Solution
- Identify Linux as a potential cost-effective enterprise platform, initially for use in the database tier of the infrastructure.
- Engage HP to provide a proof of concept of Linux using HP ProLiant servers.
- Replace existing Sun systems with clustered HP ProLiant DL380 servers and an HP StorageWorks MSA 1000 storage system.
- Implement Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC).
Results
- Performance is expected to improve by around 100 percent, while maintenance costs will be substantially reduced.
- The new HP/Linux architecture is stable, reliable and resilient.
- Sun servers in the Web and application tiers of the architecture will now be replaced by HP ProLiant servers running Linux.
- Linux will become the preferred platform for all future UNIX-based projects.
Why HP?
- Cost-effective technology
- Ability to mount successful proof of concept
- Commitment to Linux
Technology highlights
Hardware
- Cluster of two HP ProLiant DL380 servers, running Red Hat Linux
- HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) 1000
Software
- Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC)
- HP StorageWorks Secure Path
HP Services
- Proof of concept (with support from Oracle)
- Solution design
- Sizing
September, 2004
© 2004 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
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