FAST FACTS

Industry: Government, tax collection

Geography: Ecuador

Challenge: To develop a technology solution on a stable, secure, and affordable platform for an Internet-based tax return project.

Migration Path: From proprietary software to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and from JBoss Application Server 2.4 to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

Software: Red Hat Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

Hardware: HP blades with dual-core AMD processors and quad-core Intel processors on a 64-bit architecture

Benefits: To promote and enable Internet-based tax return filing by taxpayers to reduce processing times and avoid increasing the customer service infrastructure at its own counters and bank tellers.

SRI’s experience with open source has been successful. The organization has achieved an efficient, reliable, scalable and affordable platform. The access to Red Hat’s source code has allowed the company to customize the functionality of the products in terms of business needs. The success achieved with Red Hat solutions has encouraged the organization to explore open source solutions for other areas of the business.

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
The Internal Revenue Service – SRI -, Ecuador’s tax management agency, provides services to over one and a half million taxpayers throughout the country’s 24 provinces. It maintains a workforce of 2,400 and recorded an annual income of over USD 5 billion as per 2007 data. SRI services include: taxpayer register, reception of tax returns, authorization of sales receipts, taxpayers’ claim and inquiry handling, and tax audit, among others.

SRI invested in information technology to provide over 15 different services through its portal for taxpayers and for the 60 applications on its Intranet for internal management, all Web-based. In addition, it keeps automatic information exchange processes with other government entities.

CHALLENGE
SRI developed plans to implement a new tax service program that would promote voluntary compliance with tax obligations among its taxpaying customers. It investigated different ways to make it easier for its customers to comply with fiscal procedures and created easier processes.

In 2002, SRI decided to pilot an Internet-based tax return project aimed at encouraging taxpayers to submit their tax returns online instead of submitting papers through the banking system. This called for a technology solution that could offer a stable, secure, and affordable platform.

SOLUTION
SRI first began using Red Hat solutions in 1999 when it implemented Red Hat Linux 6 on Intel Pentium III processors for a variety of internal projects but mainly to implement the Internet-based billing issuance control system. It turned to Red Hat solutions after analyzing product capabilities and the freedom from licensing costs. This last detail allowed SRI to move ahead with the project as it avoided the red tape typical of government procurement, with the ensuing time saving.

After experiencing success with its initial implementation of Red Hat Linux 6, SRI analyzed Red Hat solutions for use in its Internet-based tax return project.

SRI started a solution evaluation process that included Novell’s SUSE and Red Hat Solutions. Red Hat Linux was chosen for cost savings and reliability. When they searched for an application server solution, the organization investigated offerings from Oracle, BEA and JBoss. JBoss was the option that best met the standards and budget set for the project and the organization opted for implementing JBoss Application Server 2.4.

With the combination of Red Hat Linux and JBoss Application Server, the Internet-based tax return system was implemented as a pilot project by the end of 2002. The project introduced the Internet as a massive interaction platform with taxpayers for the first time. Three years before, in 1999, SRI implemented the Internet-based billing control system, but this is used by a limited number of users (authorized printing houses) in order to authorize sales receipt printing for taxpayers.

From the beginning of the project, Red Hat has been the operating system of choice for the internal application servers and updated it with each new version released to the market. SRI is currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is used on 90 percent of the HP Blade servers with dual-core AMD processors and quad-core Intel processors on a 64-bit architecture. It supports the 60 Intranet applications and 15 Internet applications, and approximately 95 percent of SRI’s employees rely on Red Hat solutions daily to execute their job.

BENEFITS
SRI has achieved the goal it set out to accomplish with its Internet-based tax return project and today, the number of taxpayers approaching bank tellers and SRI counters looking for help to submit their tax returns has dropped remarkably, especially high-income taxpayers that account for 70% of the tax collection aggregate.

SRI has experienced hardware and software cost savings after migrating to Red Hat solutions. In terms of hardware, the organization was able to purchase servers with lower cost architectures, such as x86 in place of Sun’s Sparc, which was SRI’s primary platform. In terms of software, Red Hat offered the best total cost of ownership – TCO – against proprietary competitors.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform have provided SRI with a robust platform for reliable Internet services for its taxpaying customers.

SRI’s experience with open source has been successful. The organization has achieved an efficient, reliable, scalable and affordable platform. The access to Red Hat’s source code has allowed the company to customize the functionality of the products in terms of business needs. The success achieved with Red Hat solutions has encouraged the organization to explore open source solutions for other areas of the business. As a matter of fact, SRI’s planned software architecture up to 2011 mostly contemplates open source solutions as certain risks relating to support availability have been eliminated with the Enterprise version alternatives.

FAST FACTS

Industry: Utilities, Government

Geography: Western Australia

Business Challenge: Decrease technology costs by avoiding expensive hardware replacement fees and improving performance and manageability

Migration Path: Tru64 Unix to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, Oracle 9i
Hardware: 30 x HP DL385 (AMD Opteron)

Benefits: Increased performance by nearly 500 percent, achieved significant cost savings of approximately $140,000 per machine and gained reliable support from a trusted vendor

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Western Power is an electricity networks corporation owned by the Western Australian Government. It transports electricity from power stations to towns and cities and then distributes it to homes and businesses. This is done via a large network of power lines known as the South West Interconnected System (SWIS), designed to meet the needs of customers and developers and to bring electricity to new areas.
While companies that produce electricity as generators, and companies that sell electricity as retailers, have access to the network, Western Power is responsible for maintaining this network and restoring power after interruptions.

“Western Power supplies energy to more than 840,000 households and businesses throughout the state,” said Julian Rouse, systems administration manager, Western Power.
“Our mission is to conduct a safe, efficient, and importantly reliable operation. As the backbone of the business, our technology infrastructure is paramount to that.”

CHALLENGE
Western Power had been a long time Compaq Tru64 Unix user, but with HP’s acquisition of Compaq, the organisation was prompted to re-evaluate its existing server environment. It was faced with aging hardware, but needed to keep server replacement costs to a minimum.
In designing a new strategic platform for the long term, improving current software performance and improving manageability were key priorities for Western Power.
“Reassessing our strategic platform initially involved a comparison between HP-UX and Compaq TRU64 offerings, but when we looked at what our major energy application provider was doing, our attention quickly turned to Linux,” said Rouse.

Western Power’s ENMAC energy management solution, developed by GE, is responsible for providing centralized, controlled, secure, safe access to the distribution network, in real-time, for maintenance and fault restoration purposes. With GE testing and then porting the software application onto Linux, it made perfect sense for Western Power to consider Linux for its new platform. This would ensure that it could achieve the best possible performance from the solution.

SOLUTION
Western Power investigated Novell SUSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its infrastructure upgrade. With the knowledge that GE was already testing ENMAC on Red Hat, the organisation soon realised that only Red Hat could guarantee optimum performance, ease of management and first-class support.
“While we evaluated the leading Linux offerings on the market, Red Hat had already established itself as the enterprise Linux market leader, and that gave us a great deal of confidence,” commented Rouse.
As Rouse recalled, another factor in choosing to work with Red Hat was Red Hat Network, an easy-to-use systems management platform that brings greater efficiency to package updates and other ongoing maintenance tasks.

“With Red Hat, we also knew that we had instant access to the right support if and when we needed it, rather than being referred to downloads from a public website. Plus, the power of the developer community meant that the Linux kernel was constantly evolving and being further improved – and that was an attractive proposition.”

By August 2007, Western Power commenced its migration to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform as part of an overall ENMAC update. The migration started with 18 HP DL385 (AMD Opteron) test and development servers and extended to a further 12 production servers, running a mix of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1. A total of more that 30 servers in development, test and production.
Through its migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Western Power became one of the first GE customers to run the ENMAC energy management solution for distribution on Linux.

BENEFITS
For Western Power, the migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux resulted in a migration to higher performance and lower running costs. Unix loads typically run on Linux using commodity-class hardware that costs up to 75 percent less than what is required by Unix systems. Through experience, Western Power has been able to realise these cost savings.

According to Rouse, “Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on more cost-effective commoditised hardware has seen the kernel outperform any previous build. This is great because the difference in cost between the HP servers we’re now able to use, compared to TRU64 Unix servers, is in the order of several magnitudes.”
“Furthermore, we’ve been able to halve our hardware cost per node, because the 64-bit kernel has enabled us to tune our hardware for both excellent memory and disc performance, allowing us to be able to run both Oracle and EMAC on the same box, whereas previously this required separate tiered machines” Rouse added.

Rouse estimates that, to date, Western Power has experienced CAPEX cost savings of approximately $140,000 per machine, along with a 50 percent increase in total system headroom due to an average CPU usage drop and an impressive performance gain of 500 percent.
Western Power also looks forward to further savings on an ongoing basis. With the move to commodity hardware and virtualisation, it will be able to decrease annual hardware maintenance costs by up to 80 percent.

“There’s no doubt that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is our operating system of choice, and as we embark on overhauling our middleware application, our next focus will be on extending our investment in open source with the introduction of JBoss into our environment,” said Rouse.
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Industry: Financial Trading

Geography: Global

Challenge: To integrate varied trading platforms to produce a high-speed, low-cost platform that offers the reliability and flexibility necessary to produce the rapid performance results demanded by the expanding financial trading industry

Migration Path: HP UX, IBM AIX, and SUN Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network

Hardware: 200 HP ProLiant DL585 four-processor servers, 400 ProLiant BL 685c blades, AMD dual-core Opteron processors

Benefits: Implemented a reliable, secure, and cost-effective solution that provided flexibility, freedom from vendor lock-in, and the ability to handle heavy workloads while producing fast-paced performance results

“Red Hat is extremely strategic and without it, most of our computers wouldn’t be running,” said Steve Rubinow, Chief Information Officer at NYSE Euronext.

Download [PDF]

With the acquisition of Archipelago and Euronext complete, NYSE Euronext faced the ongoing challenge of integrating its varied trading platforms to produce a simplified and optimized technology architecture. During this integration, NYSE Euronext sought to enhance the effectiveness of its technology through the incorporation of features needed to remain competitive in the current market. It needed a high-speed, low-cost platform that offered the reliability and flexibility necessary to produce the fast-paced performance results demanded by the industry.

“We’re working on integrating all the pieces of our business together and making the result better than any of the systems that comprised it in the first place. From a system architecture standpoint, we need to be very flexible. We must have the latest and greatest technology without painting ourselves into a corner and without finding out that we are out-running the capabilities of our solutions. Technology is in every corner of what we do, and the software that sits on our technology is key to being us remaining a viable competitor today,” said Steve Rubinow, Chief Information Officer at NYSE Euronext.

SOLUTION
When assessing the right technology solution to help enable the optimized processing of the hundreds of thousands of messages per second and the billions of messages per day that are processed by the NYSE Euronext electronic trading platform, three considerations were made. The cost of starting, the cost of support, and the cost of potentially leaving the technology solution in the future were all considered.

“Too many people forget that the cost of leaving a technology can be substantial. We didn’t want to get locked into any certain technologies, and desired the flexibility to jump to a different hardware platform if necessary,” said Rubinow. “Linux gives us that flexibility. We felt that Linux was right for our environment, so we decided to pursue it full speed ahead.”

NYSE Euronext investigated two competing Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and compared the solutions based purely on the offered technology and related support. When support was considered, it was quickly clear that the leading choice was Red Hat. So, NYSE Euronext decided to implement Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run its mission-critical electronic trading platform.

“We needed a good partner and found one in Red Hat. We were looking for a partner that was offering reliable software and one that would help and advice on its use while providing the value of trusted support services. Red Hat satisfied our objectives,” said Rubinow.

Today, much of NYSE Euronext’s high-speed trading environments rely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “The pace of electronic trading has picked up dramatically, and across the enterprise, the main part of our 6.5-hour trading day includes the processing of billions of messages,” said Rubinow.

To maintain its several hundred servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, NYSE Euronext employs Red Hat Network. With Red Hat Network Update and Management solutions, NYSE Euronext has been able to effectively manage its complex, mission-critical systems.

NYSE Euronext also relies on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its included Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) functionality to preserve the security of its platform. With trillions of dollars flowing through the exchange each month, security is a large and very important organizational focus. “We are very security conscious because we have to be. The operating system is a key part of every server that we operate and each server must be secure at all times. We maintain the security of our systems by relying on the SELinux features within Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” said Rubinow.

BENEFITS
Of the very elite competition in the marketplace, NYSE Euronext must compete with other top players in size and in features, but also in the demand to be the fastest and the most reliable at the lowest cost. Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers on these requirements, in addition to providing flexibility, high levels of security, and a unique customer feedback loop.

“With the combination of speed, cost, reliability, and functionality pushed to the limit, we have to out perform the competition in each category, and our competition is getting better all the time. Linux as an operating system has been the fastest growing with respect to these requirements, and we’re not limited by what’s in front of us. The quality of the Linux platform is greatly important to us and Red Hat Enterprise Linux has exceeded our expectations,” said Rubinow.

In addition, NYSE Euronext benefits from the unmatched value Red Hat places on customer feedback. Important to the open source model is the constant feedback loop between users and customers and the engineers and developers behind the software. Through Red Hat’s Global Support Services, there is constant feedback and development between Red Hat and its customers. “When we have mundane questions, they’re answered quickly. When we have larger technical questions, we put our best minds and Red Hat’s best minds together and have these smart people work in collaboration to solve the problem,” said Rubinow.

With continued growth, new development, and ongoing conversion activities, NYSE Euronext will add several hundred more subscriptions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the coming 18 months. In addition, Red Hat solutions are slated to play a pivotal role in NYSE Euronext’s next-generation trading platform, the Universal Trading Platform. Currently, the first phase of the project is planned for completion by the end of 2008.

“Red Hat is almost like water, it’s pervasive within our architecture. Red Hat is extremely strategic and without it, most of our computers wouldn’t be running,” said Rubinow.

Industry: Government

Geography: Sweden

Opportunity: To replace costly proprietary software with reliable open source solutions to reduce acquisition and ongoing costs for the organization’s IT department.

Migration Path: Proprietary software and hardware, including Hewlett Packard PA-RISC chip-architecture, HP-UX Unix operating system, Oracle database and BEA WebLogic Server, to open source solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Application Platform

Solution:

Hardware: HP Blade System C-class servers with 300 AMD Opteron Dual Core CPUs

Operating System Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

Application Server: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2

Database: MySQL Enterprise Server 5

Benefits: Experienced reduced TCO, increased reliability, enhanced performance, freedom from vendor lock-in, and expects estimated cost savings of approximately €20 million Euros over the next five years

This story is available in the following languages: [  ]

BACKGROUND

Swedish National Police Board (SNPB) is the law enforcement agency for the country of Sweden. The Police Board consists of the 21 Police authorities in Sweden, in addition to the National Laboratory of Forensic Science. The Police Board employees 25,000 staff, including 16,900 policemen and 535 IT department workers.

OPPORTUNITY

The Police Board uses approximately 500 separate IT applications, 70 percent of which are developed in-house by the SNPB IT department. The applications are used to support the functions of the Police force, covering a wide range of activities, including incident reporting, investigations, traffic surveillance, forensics, human resources, and accounting.

The IT department at SNPB has historically used a number of propriety solutions to provide the required services for the organisation’s underlying IT infrastructure. Faced with the large costs associated with licensing, support, and maintenance for its proprietary solutions, the Police Board searched for ways to reduce acquisition and ongoing costs for its IT department.

The long-term goal of the Police Board is to replace all the proprietary software running on its servers with open source solutions. In addition to cost savings on licenses, support, and maintenance, the Police Board would benefit from the open standards, freedom of choice, increased competition between vendors, minimized vendor lock-in, reduced TCO, and increased ROI that is associated with open source solutions.

SOLUTION

As it explored open source solution alternatives to its costly proprietary software, the SNPB IT department embarked on a pilot proof-of-concept project to test the viability of using open source solutions within its organization. Looking to replace its existing BEA WebLogic application server with an open source alternative, the SNPB saw only one realistic option, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

“The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was able to deliver the performance that was required and had the professional support necessary to enable us to confidently deploy the software in a production environment,” said Per-Ola
Sjöswärd, Executive IT Strategist at the Swedish National Police Board. “The IT department required very little convincing to its suitability as it is well known in the industry as the leading open source application server. Additionally, training was not an issue, as many of the in-house developers had been using JBoss technology before. From a development perspective, JBoss fit well into our existing setup, as all of its in-house development is done in Java.”

The pilot scheme for SNPB’s open source architecture was the migration of the Police photo database, named “PICTURE.” The PICTURE database fulfills three roles at the Police Board. First, it is used to store and search for passport photos — all citizens applying for a passport in Sweden must have their photo taken in a police station, which is then stored on the central database. Second, the PICTURE database is used to store and archive photos taken by police officers with digital cameras. Finally, the database is used as a common service for any other police application which requires access to photographs. As the system uses web services, the application can potentially be accessed by a large range of devices, such as mobile devices. In the near future, police officers will be able to use smartphones and PDAs to access the photo database to verify identification while they are out on duty.

The existing PICTURE system was built using entirely proprietary software and hardware, including Hewlett Packard PA-RISC chip-architecture, HP-UX Unix operating system, Oracle database and BEA WebLogic Server. The SNPB’s pilot was built by replacing all of these proprietary solutions with open source alternatives. The new architecture utilizes commodity x86-architecture, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, MySQL and the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, which replaced the BEA WebLogic server. The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform performs a vital role in the new infrastructure, running the PICTURE application, handling user requests, and accessing the picture database.

System integrator Red Pill provided assistance for the project, with integration and training services. Additionally, the Police Board relies on JBoss for ongoing support and updates through a subscription to JBoss Operations Network.

BENEFITS
During its evaluation of the potential benefits of open source alternatives for the PICTURE system, the Police Board calculated the costs associated with the potential solutions for its IT system. Taking into consideration cost savings from volume discounts, the TCO of the proprietary solution for three years was estimated at €260,000. The team similarly calculated the cost of its proposed open source and commodity x86-architecture solution. At full list price, without allowances for volume discounts for the open source products, the TCO for the open source alternative over three years was valued at €70,300 — a massive 73 percent cost savings when compared to its current proprietary solution.

The SNPB has estimated that by switching to open source solutions and commodity x86-architecture for all new IT-systems, will save approximately €20 million Euros in IT costs over the next five years. With its IT cost savings, the SNPB now has the opportunity to purchase 400 new police cars or hire 70 new system developers during the same five-year time frame.

In addition to costs savings, SNPB’s new open source system has also delivered performance advantages over its former proprietary solution. The average load for the PICTURE system is 3,500 new passport images per day.

Industry: Healthcare Geography: Boston, MA

Opportunity: Migrate core clinical applications to stable, secure operating environment and create new disaster-recovery system with higher availability

Migration Path: HP Unix to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux; Red Hat Global File System and Cluster Suite; Intersystems Caché; proprietary Triple A, utility, and security applications

Hardware: HP DL385 with AMD dual-core processors

Benefits: Realized $200,000 in annual cost savings, decreased annual downtime from 20 hours to near zero—furthering leading-edge patient care

Challenge

In 2005, Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and BIDMC, wanted to migrate the hospital’s IT infrastructure to a more secure, reliable operating system that would reduce operating and capital expenditures. “Our Triple A applications, which are responsible for all of the clinical, financial, administrative, and academic activities in the hospital, ran on HP Unix. But the operating system had memory leaks and required frequent virus patches,” said Halamka. “We experienced approximately 20 hours of planned and unplanned downtime last year,” added Rob Hurst, Sr. Caché Administrator for BIDMC. The hospital not only wanted to move its applications to a more stable and secure operating system, but also wanted to create a new disaster-recovery system that would increase availability from 99.7 percent to 99.99 percent—improving the hospital’s level of patient care even further.

Solution

Three years prior, BIDMC had begun using Red Hat for the hospital’s utility services, including mail exchange, spam filtering, and DNS. “Our internal security team was running Red Hat Enterprise Linux exclusively on its servers, so we knew Red Hat provided rock-solid security,” said Hurst. However, executive management questioned whether an open source solution could scale sufficiently while providing the level of reliability needed to support enterprise applications. As the former IT director for another Northeastern hospital, Hurst had gained extensive experience deploying Red Hat for core clinical systems. “Based on my previous experience, I was able to provide BIDMC with benchmark data, demonstrating that Red Hat performance, scalability, and reliability was proven in hospital environments,” he said.

After gaining management approval, Hurst spearheaded the migration project, purchasing Red Hat Enterprise Linux from DLT Solutions, one of Red Hat’s value-added providers dedicated to healthcare and government environments. Hurst’s team deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux on 11 servers that run Intersystems Caché, as well as the hospital’s proprietary Triple A applications. “Red Hat Professional Services helped us review the architecture design, ensuring a smooth transition to our production environment,” said Hurst. Within six months, the migration from HP-UX to Red Hat was complete, and Hurst is now leveraging Red Hat solutions, including Red Hat Global File System (GFS) and Cluster Suite, to implement a more robust disaster-recovery strategy. BIDMC currently operates four environments—development, testing, production, and shadow production—and runs 11 servers in a cluster.

Using Red Hat Global File System and Cluster Suite, Hurst and his team are creating a multi-tiered architecture that separates the network, applications, and database layers within one stack. “Red Hat GFS creates one file system as if all of the layers are running on one server and redirects files seamlessly as needed. If we have an unplanned outage on one application server, then GFS automatically distributes to another application server or environment, eliminating lengthy wait times,” said Hurst. To perform a planned update, such as a security patch or memory upgrade, GFS enables the team to redirect to a different environment easily without having to shut down the system.

Benefits

Red Hat’s open source technology, combined with high-level support, provide BIDMC with the reliability and agility it requires to run a leading-edge hospital. “Red Hat solutions, such as GFS and Cluster Suite, are built into the kernel, providing all of the open source technology we need—affordably and without vendor lock-in,” said Hurst. Before moving its Red Hat servers into production, Hurst was impressed when his team was able to communicate directly with the Vice President of Support, 24×7. “Red Hat is an engineering-focused company with executive management and a Global Support Services team that is highly involved and technically capable. This means we can resolve issues quickly and keep our most critical hospital information systems available to ensure leading-edge patient care,” he said.

BIDMC’s roadmap includes moving other hospital systems from HP-UX to Red Hat. “The hospital is currently considering migrating its Oracle and PeopleSoft database applications to Red Hat. “Moving our core clinical applications to Red Hat was the first step. The reliability and performance gains we’ve experienced are proof that we’re ready to migrate our other applications,” said Hurst.

For more about Red Hat’s open source solutions for healthcare, visit the Red Hat healthcare web site http://www.redhat.com/solutions/healthcare

Industry: Digital advertising
Challenge: DoubleClick faced the challenge of developing an infrastructure that is reliable, cost-effective, and most importantly, flexible, in providing choice with hardware vendors in order to avoid vendor lock-in.
Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, Red Hat Network, Acronis True Image Server for Linux, Solaris, Windows, Red Hat Global Learning Services – Red Hat Certified Engineer training
Hardware: AMD, Intel, HP
Benefits:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux provided DoubleClick with flexibility and power of choice in selecting a hardware vendor to avoid lock-in.
• Using Red Hat solutions helped DoubleClick save over $500,000 in hardware costs. DoubleClick now has the ability to handle more work load with fewer CPUs, as it ported 112 CPUs to 64 CPUs.
• With the help of Acronis solutions, DoubleClick enjoyed an easy and quick migration from RHEL 3 to RHEL 4 in one hour.

This story is available in the following languages: [  ]

Background
DoubleClick is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. Many of the world’s top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers. Headquartered in New York, and with 17 offices and development hubs and 15 data centers worldwide, the company employs more than 1200 people and delivers billions of digital communications every day. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.Recently, DoubleClick partnered with Acronis, a leading storage management solution provider, to aid in its migration to Red Hat solutions. DoubleClick deployed Acronis’ Linux data migration solution on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one of the first examples of imaging solutions based on Linux. Together, Red Hat and Acronis made DoubleClick’s migration from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 seamless

Challenge
DoubleClick offers a suite of products to meet customer’s digital marketing needs. Serving customers ranging from agencies, advertisers and marketers to web publishers, networks and media websites, DoubleClick is responsible for delivering advertisements and providing management technology that measures the effectiveness of online campaigns.

With the need to consistently serve ads and provide data access, downtime is not an option for DoubleClick. “Uptime is based on millisecond delay and if a server is lost, it must be replaced within an hour,” said Derrick Colon, director of Assistance Infrastructure at DoubleClick. “If we don’t deliver the reports we promise on time each day, our customers will be rightfully upset. That’s why our solutions must be up and available at all times.”

Solution
In the face of these high client expectations, DoubleClick needed an infrastructure that would be reliable, cost-effective and – most importantly – flexible. The company was interested in high-level support for its solutions and the ability to choose and easily switch hardware vendors in order to avoid lock-in. With Red Hat, DoubleClick found the flexibility it was looking for, and an opportunity for high-quality support.

Until 2004, DoubleClick ran an ETL-based application on a Sun Solaris platform. Realizing that the platform offered limited vendor choices, the company decided to investigate alternative platforms that would offer greater flexibility in vendors. As DoubleClick explored potential operating systems for their infrastructure, support also became a large factor in the selection process. DoubleClick did not want to be forced into large modifications, but wanted a functional system, an easy migration and a comfortable support service in which they could have confidence.

DoubleClick narrowed its options to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise, both open source solutions. Ultimately, DoubleClick chose the industry leader, Red Hat. “We decided Red Hat was the best way to go because of its strong position in the United States and the fact that it is well supported by HP, IBM and other major players,” said Colon. “We were also very impressed by their flexibility and the big company support that came with the Red Hat solution.”

By choosing Red Hat, DoubleClick was able to work with the hardware vendor and support provider of their choice, Hewlett Packard, which offered DoubleClick the opportunity for cost-savings through hardware.

After choosing Red Hat, DoubleClick ported an equivalent of 112 CPUs on Sun servers running Solaris to 64 Intel and AMD CPUs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, cutting the hardware cost more than half. The current environment is a mix of Red Hat, Solaris and Windows, with Red Hat playing a significant role. Originally running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, DoubleClick upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise 3 and most recently Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 with the help of Acronis True Image Server for Linux.

Acronis, the only company with a cloning method certified to work on Linux, uses its solutions to create an exact copy of a company’s hard disk that allows for an instant restoration of the entire machine including operating system, applications and all data in the event of a fatal system crash, virus attack or other problem. DoubleClick chose Acronis for its cloning ability to aid its migration from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 to 4. By cloning the image of one upgrade and using it for other server migrations, the process is considerably expedited. As a result, DoubleClick was able to migrate its servers from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 seamlessly.

While preparing for the upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, DoubleClick wanted to ensure that should any problems arise, it could revert back to its earlier version of the operating system within two hours. Although the operating system upgrades were executed without a hitch, DoubleClick was protected against unforeseen circumstances. Had there been any unanticipated problems, DoubleClick could have reverted to the old operating system within its required timeframe. This added protection made it easier for the company to decide to upgrade.

Also aiding in the ease of migration were the Red Hat certifications that the DoubleClick team obtained during the original Red Hat implementation. The Red Hat Certified Engineer certification proves an individual’s ability to configure networking services and security on servers running a Red Hat operating system. “When we first migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, we taught ourselves from the ground up,” said Colon. “The existing team went through Red Hat certification training, and today we have about five Red Hat Certified Engineers on our staff who facilitated our migration.”

Benefits

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been an integral part of DoubleClick’s infrastructure for three years. From the start, Red Hat has provided DoubleClick with a reliable and dynamic solution that keeps its technology performing in line with demand. With Red Hat and its partners, the company exercised the power of choice, achieved over half a million dollars worth of cost-savings through commodity hardware, enjoyed reliable support and experienced a scalable solution.

“The flexibility in deciding which hardware vendor I want to work with gives me more choices and more control,” said Colon.

Additionally, DoubleClick has benefited from the scalability that Red Hat Enterprise Linux presents. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has provided DoubleClick with a scalable solution. “Essentially, this solution has enabled me to do more with less,” said Colon. “Thanks to the tools at our disposal, we are more than able to handle the needs of the company, while enhancing efficiency and productivity.”

“The combination of Red Hat, HP and Acronis is a strong one,” said Colon. “All three organizations bring valuable expertise and resources to the table – HP from a hardware perspective, Acronis in terms of the ease of getting systems up quickly with the option to roll out or back, and Red Hat for maintaining an environment without having to buy thousands of servers with reporting structure.”

Looking forward, DoubleClick plans to upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and is anticipating working with the virtualization features that were incorporated in the latest release. Virtualization, via Xen, enables customers using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 to run multiple operating system instances on a single physical system and isolate the application stack from the hardware.

Industry: Travel

Geography: Australia

Challenge: Microsoft-based infrastructure could not scale to match Wotif.com’s 100% growth rate.

Solution: Platform: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS
Software: Oracle10g Standard Edition, Java 1.5
Hardware: AMD Opteron
Systems Management: Red Hat Network

Benefits: Increased performance upto 500% peak load. Lower TCO. Simplified systems administration

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Wotif.com, founded in 2000, (www.wotif.com) is Australia’s leading last-minute accommodation website and the global specialist in its field. Its easy-to-use booking engine offers travellers accommodations within the next 14 days at competitive rates. Wotif.com’s portfolio includes over 6,000 hotels, motels, serviced apartments, resorts, guesthouses, and bed & breakfasts worldwide.

Wotif.com is headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, with offices in Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Properties listed with Wotif.com can be booked online or through the Customer Service Center, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We’re very satisfied with Red Hat and currently have no plans to change. While Red Hat continues to offer us an open architecture, transparency, strong relationships with tier one vendors and a quick resolution on any issues, we will see them as a strategic partner in our business.

Online travel booking sites have exploded over the past few years. Wotif.com’s website processes nearly 2 million user sessions per month, growing at more than 100% per annum. The site has more than 370,000 subscribers and makes more than 100,000 bookings monthly.

Explosive Growth demands better technology

When Paul Young, Chief Information Officer for Wotif.com, joined the company in 2002 it was essentially a Microsoft shop. Wotif.com was having enormous issues with performance, scalability, and system availability because of 80-100% yearly growth.

“Basically, the existing infrastructure just could not cope with the increasing demand being placed upon it,” explained Young.

Young’s job was to determine which solution would be able to address these critical issues over the next five to seven years.

Searching for vendor support

Young was very familiar with UNIX®, Linux®, and open source technologies, having used them for a long time as a programmer and later as a professional manager.

Young decided that Wotif.com’s overall architecture needed a solution that was scalable, open source, and UNIX-like. Buy-in and support from tier-one vendors like Oracle was also essential. The platform that best met these needs was Red Hat® Enterprise Linux.

I’m able to leverage off the best hardware and best processors available and find a Red Hat kernel that will run on it. With Red Hat I can port across to the hardware platform of my choice and off we go.

“When we were first researching solutions a few years ago, Red Hat stood out because of its partnerships with major vendors like Oracle and IBM. There is not much difference in terms of the operating system with the Linux variants on the market, but even now, I still believe that Red Hat leads the way with industry partnerships. It’s this vendor support that makes Red Hat a comfortable proposition to take to senior management,” said Young.

The Solution = Red Hat + Oracle10g + AMD Opteron

Wotif.com is using Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS on 64-bit AMD® Opteron® servers. The overall solution also includes Oracle® Database 10g® Standard Edition and Java® 1.5. Development is done using agile programming for rapid production of an application server with Java and J2EE™ on Fedora™ Core 3 machines.

Site architecture is based on open standards and utilizes high quality open source software where applicable. The Wotif.com site can handle all customer, supplier, and administrative requests, as well as integrated requests from third-party reservation systems.

Young appreciates the flexibility that Red Hat gives Wotif.com with its hardware choices. “I’m able to leverage off the best hardware and best processors available and find a Red Hat kernel that will run on it. In a business where hardware is changing rapidly, I don’t want to have to change all my operations, operating systems, processes, and procedures to get the best environment. With Red Hat I can port across to the hardware platform of my choice and off we go.”

Lower cost, Higher performance

Wotif.com has found numerous benefits from its Red Hat Enterprise Linux migration, in areas such as performance, cost, and ease of administration. For example, when running any enterprise application there are a number of jobs that need to happen around the edges, like running reports, processing web logs, and backup tasks. Using the tools available with Red Hat Network these tasks can all be done seamlessly in the Red Hat environment, something that was much more difficult in a Microsoft infrastructure.

Wotif.com has also found its Red Hat environment to be much more cost effective. “I find it astounding that anyone could say that TCO for Microsoft servers is less than Linux-based servers! I have seventeen years experience in this industry and I’ve never seen this to be the case — it’s all marketing hype. I think that there is a new group of more savvy IT professionals coming through, and the marketing and their real-life experience just don’t match up,” said Young.

I’m able to leverage off the best hardware and best processors available and find a Red Hat kernel that will run on it. With Red Hat I can port across to the hardware platform of my choice and off we go.

The core benefit for Wotif.com has been in performance and availability. As a global operation running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Wotif.com cannot tolerate downtime. They must guarantee customers the same experience, regardless offluctuating usage or system load, and especially at peak load.

Under Wotif.com’s current architecture, extensive load testing has found that the site can run at 500% peak load. According to Young, there was no way that would have been possible with the previous infrastructure.

“For us, performance management has a huge focus. One of the primary issues facing online businesses is the fluctuating nature and periodic bursts of traffic. It’s relatively simple to design a site that operates at speed for normal customer loads. However to handle peak periods when traffic can reach levels of 200-300% of normal loads a site requires a sophisticated and complex site architecture. Our continuing rapid growth compounds this issue. We’s relatively simple to design a site that operates at speed for normal customer loads. However to handle peak periods when traffic can reach levels of 200-300% of normal loads a site requires a sophisticated and complex site architecture. Our continuing rapid growth compounds this issue. We’ve invested a lot in ensuring a consistent positive customer experience on our site under varying load conditions and it’s essential that our IT infrastructure is able to back that up. At Wotif we want to ensure that our customers have an excellent experience every time they book accommodation with us,” explained Young.

Committed to excellence

Wotif.com sees Red Hat as part of an overall approach to nimble and flexible operation within the IT market. The business is committed to open standards, non-proprietary open source software and operating systems, and open architectures.

“We’re very satisfied with Red Hat and currently have no plans to change. While Red Hat continues to offer us an open architecture, transparency, strong relationships with tier one vendors, and a quick resolution on any issues, we will see them as a strategic partner in our business,” concluded Young.

Industry: Oil and Gas

Geography: Headquartered in Norway, with operations worldwide

Goal: To standardise from seven Unix variants to Linux, thereby cutting costs and increasing efficiency across the organization

Solution: Platform: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, versions 2.1 and 3
Hardware: Intel and AMD
Applications: Oracle Database, BEA WebLogic, Schlumberger Eclipse, Landmark drilling software

Benefits: 50% cost savings as compared to Unix. Performance increase by a factor of 10-40.

This story is available in the following languages: [  |  ]

Based in Norway and represented in 29 countries around the world, Statoil is an integrated oil and gas company and one of the world’s biggest sellers of crude oil. They are a leading retailer of petrol and oil products in Scandinavia, Ireland, Poland and the Baltic states and one of the major suppliers of natural gas to the European market. To support such strong international growth, nearly 50 percent of Statoil’s 24,000 employees work outside of Norway.

One of the world’s largest operators of offshore oil and gas activities, Statoil is accustomed to tackling challenges. Their goal is to excel in three areas– environmental, social, and financial—believing the three are mutually supportive and combine to build a robust company. Statoil continually looks for ways to improve and provide increased value in those three areas. Statoil determined that migrating their application infrastructure and HPC needs off legacy UNIX and standardising on Red Hat Enterprise Linux would allow them to manage operations more efficiently thus drastically reducing the cost of IT operations—and strengthening their bottom line.

Need to standardise IT systems prompts early interest in Linux

In the late 1990’s Statoil’s IT environment supported seven different proprietary Unix brands along with Microsoft Windows. According to Ole Petter Drange, Operation Manager for servers and data storage, “Our biggest goal was to standardise the server platforms as much as possible.”

Statoil’s interest in Linux started in 1999, when Linux was just beginning to emerge as a viable enterprise operating platform. According to Senior Engineer and Systems Programmer Johnny Roen, decisions are made only after thorough research. “Some very experienced system managers did a study of the market situation for Linux and the possible uses for the new operating system. That study, which resulted in an internal report, triggered a project that even more thoroughly investigated how Linux could be adopted within Statoil,” he explained.

The project assessed how and when the applications that Statoil depended on could be migrated and concluded that general services such as application servers and databases should be migrated first. In a second phase, Statoil should begin using Linux as the base for their HPC needs – analysing and simulating based on huge data sets.

We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a number of reasons, the most basic being the openness of the operating system and the big market share that Red Hat had already at that time. Compared to the alternatives, where SuSE was the main competitor, Red Hat also had other advantages. The competency among third party suppliers was better, there was more documentation on the product, and there were also a number of “followers” among Linux vendors who based their products on Red Hat’s source code.

–Johnny Roen, Senior Engineer
and Systems Programmer

Market leadership and expertise make Red Hat a clear choice

Statoil chose Linux and Intel hardware largely because of the significant reduction in cost and complexity of operations, especially when compared to the cost of RISC-based platforms. “Statoil’s strict requirements for application quality and availability are still very high, just as they were before our migration to Linux, so no compromises have been made in that area,” said Roen. “This very thorough standardisation, from seven UNIX variants to only Linux and Windows, will result in a drastically more efficient system administrator work force.”

“We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a number of reasons, the most basic being the openness of the operating system and the big market share that Red Hat had already at that time. Compared to the alternatives, where SuSE was the main competitor, Red Hat also had other advantages. The competency among third party suppliers was better, there was more documentation on the product, and there were also a number of “followers” among Linux vendors who based their products on Red Hat’s source code,” Roen explained.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed according to plan

A test project on the Intel platform was launched so that Statoil could test primary applications such as Web and email. They deployed their first production systems on Linux in 2000, and by 2001 Linux was named the preferred platform at Statoil. As planned, Statoil initially focused on migrating Internet/intranet services like Web, mail, and DNS servers.

They then moved on to other enterprise applications, and now the largest usage areas of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are for Oracle databases and BEA Weblogic application servers. Currently Statoil has 16 large-scale Oracle servers, each with four-CPU Xeon processors by Intel and 16 GB of RAM. There are several smaller Oracle servers used for the Landmark drilling software. Each server is attached to a SAN storage system by EMC.

In keeping with their plan, Statoil then turned to Linux as the base for their HPC needs. They now have over 1000 nodes across multiple clusters and locations. Each utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel hardware, analysing and creating simulations based on huge data sets. Their largest single cluster went live in late 2004 with 512 nodes, making it the largest supercomputing cluster in Norway. It contains 1024 Intel Xeon processors running at 3.06 Ghz and can achieve a theoretical peak performance of 6.266 TFLOPS, ranking it among the 100 most powerful computers in the world.1 Acting as a single machine, this cluster processes seismic data in Statoil’s search for new petroleum resources around the world.

Roen also acknowledges that there are a limited number of clients running Enterprise Linux for what Statoil calls ‘under-the-ground’ applications, whose purpose in to survey and monitor wells that are literally under ground.

One of the biggest lessons we learned is that it’s safer to use well-tested kernels than taking a chance on the latest technology. This is one of the greatest values of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux release model.

Lessons learned as an early adoptor

Because Statoil was such an early adopter of Linux, they experienced some technical issues that they had not experienced in their Unix environment. “It was to be expected, and identifying and correcting those problems took some time,” explained Drange, “but nevertheless, the TCO was always far lower with Linux than it was with Unix, so it was worth it.”

Even though Red Hat boasted significantly more 3rd party suppliers and application support than others in the market, when Statoil began migrating in 2000, some application software vendors were hesitant to port to Linux. However, according to Roen, software vendors have realized that Linux is a strategic platform for their customers, so this is becoming less of a problem.

Initially, Statoil required custom changes to the operating system, a process that allowed them to acquire huge amounts of knowledge and experience. “We made sure to carefully define routines for platform managment and certification, as well as version handling,” said Roen. “And one of the biggest lessons we learned is that it’s safer to use well-tested kernels than taking a chance on the latest technology. This is one of the greatest values of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux release model.” Statoil is able to take advantage of whichever version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux best suits the needs of a particular project. Drange says that they currently utilize both versions 2.1 and 3 throughout their organization.

Statoil has used Red Hat’s support on several occasions, both regular support and the Technical Account Manager. The TAM has been useful, not only in the normal support workflow, but also in discussions regarding technical issues between Statoil and some application software vendors. Because he’s dedicated to our account, our TAM is able to pay special attention to our environment and can help proactively.

Roen believes that one of the biggest benefits of the vast internal knowledge at Statoil is that it has enabled stronger relationships with Red Hat Global Support Services. “Statoil has used Red Hat’s support on several occasions, both regular support and the Technical Account Manager. The TAM has been useful, not only in the normal support workflow, but also in discussions regarding technical issues between Statoil and some application software vendors. Because he’s dedicated to our account, our TAM is able to pay special attention to our environment and can help proactively.”

Success: Standardisation, Cost savings and Performance increase

Statoil’s goals in migrating from legacy-UNIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux were to manage IT operations more efficiently, cut costs and strengthen their bottom line. Although their consolidation work is ongoing, they’ve met and exceeded their original goal. Statoil has already reduced the number of Unix versions in their environment from seven to four. As a result, 70% of the services that were run on Unix now are run on Linux. “We reported a 50% cost savings after migrating those systems from Unix to Linux on Intel,” Drange said.

Additionally, Statoil has noticed significant performance improvements. “Schlumberger’s Eclipse, an application we use for reservoir simulation, gained 10-40 times the performance due to the platform change,” reported Roen. “Even a current-technology Silicon Graphics server was slower than the Red Hat-Intel combination.”

Moving forward, Drange says, “It is Statoil’s expressed strategy since 2001 to use open source systems. Linux is preferred to Unix and gradually more and more systems will be phased out in favor of Red Hat Enteprise Linux.”

1. As of 17 March 2005 on www.top500.org

32 node and 96 node clusters power national research projects

Industry: Academia

Challenges: Modernize and scale proprietary, SMP-UNIX infrastructure. Set up a high performance computing environment that can handle cutting edge research projects. Simplify management and system administration.

Solution: Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Hardware: AMD64 and Intel 32-bit servers

Benefits: Improvement in performance and overall computation time through 64-bit x86 servers. Significant TCO reduction by eliminating the need for proprietary licenses and RISC based hardware. Freedom to modify and work with the source code

This story is available in the following languages: [  ]

Introduction

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur is one of the premier institutions established by the Government of India. The institute has a goal to conduct original research of the highest standard and to provide leadership in technological innovation for the growth of the country. Established in 1959, IIT Kanpur boasts of a sprawling residential campus that spans across 420 hectares. With path-breaking innovations in both its curriculum and research, the institute is rapidly gaining a legendary reputation across the world.

Challenges

In addition to offering formal undergraduate and post-graduate programs, IIT Kanpur is a leading contributor to national research & development. The institute faces a formidable challenge in maintaining a state of the art research facility that enables both students and faculty to participate in national science and technology projects.

The projects typically involve development of complex applications in diverse areas like fluid dynamics, molecular modeling, speech recognition, etc. The conventional method employed by the institute to run these resource hungry applications was to use large RISC based, SMP servers running different flavors of UNIX.

Over the years, IIT Kanpur had amassed a significant number of standalone SMP servers that were quickly reaching their threshold limits. In addition to requiring the purchase of expensive compilers and proprietary software components, the flexibility offered in a closed environment was limited. The availability of local support staff was another concern, as the infrastructure had to be up and running on a 24×7x365 basis. In the event of a failure, sourcing support from outside the campus was a painstaking process.

A state of the art High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC), capable of processing large amounts of parallel or sequential data became the need of the hour.

“For our high performance computing needs, we were looking for an operating environment that could deliver top performance and stability, while maintaining a high degree of sustenance for running complex jobs,” says Dheeraj Sanghi, Professor, CSE Department, IIT Kanpur.

“Some of the complex applications developed on campus require a continuous runtime in excess of a month. Imagine the frustration and loss if a crash were to happen on the Nth day. It would not only put the research project behind schedule, but would also mean a complete wastage of weeks of computation time. We required a popular platform that had campus wide support, which would reduce our dependence on outside vendors to a bare minimum,” adds Sanghi.

Solution

IIT Kanpur’s tryst with Linux on the HPCC front began in late 2002. After setting up its first experimental Beowulf cluster with 16 Pentium III class servers on Red Hat Linux 7, the benefits of using an open source platform became apparent. Initially, the cluster was meant to be only a test bed for running parallel applications.

“Before this, we had used Red Hat Linux only on the non-critical services side to run applications like Web servers, mail servers , proxies, DNS, etc.,” claims Brajesh Pande, Senior Computer Engineer, Computer Centre, IIT Kanpur.

“However, the satisfactory results that we soon witnessed on the HPCC test bed justified the investment in state of the art Linux clusters for our research facility,” he adds.

In mid 2004, the institute setup its first Beowulf cluster for production use on the Red Hat Linux 9 platform, powered by 32 low cost, x86/32-bit servers. With the availability of low cost AMD 64-bit processors in the market and the significant 64-bit capabilities built into the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform, the institute began to look at purchasing new 64-bit machines to add a second, more powerful cluster.

“Since Red Hat offered a stable, base OS that was compatible and certified across a wide range of 64-bit hardware, it was a natural choice for the second cluster project. Plus, it offered full support for different compiler platforms through GCC,” explains Sanghi.

In 2005, the institute setup its second, 96 node cluster with 98 AMD64 Opteron servers powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. Two dedicated engineers employed by the institute manage the two clusters 24×7x365.

“Instead of investing in expensive RISC-UNIX 64-bit servers, low cost AMD64 Opteron machines powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux were a smarter choice for us. As Red Hat is the most popular Linux flavor in the market, everyone on campus was already familiar with its intricacies. In fact, we have been both using and actively following Red Hat’s progress right from the release of Red Hat Linux 5,” adds Sanghi.

Benefits

With proprietary UNIX-RISC servers, scaling the HPC infrastructure was an expensive proposition for IIT Kanpur. With Enterprise Linux running on non-RISC hardware, the institute has found a scalable, low cost solution that delivers the same performance, without any compromises.

“With Red Hat’s popularity on campus, both students and faculty now have the flexibility to develop applications using open standards on their Fedora or Red Hat machines. When these applications are ready, they can seamlessly move them to the HPCC environment for computation,” says Sanghi.

“Red Hat has also given us tremendous freedom to tinker with the OS, which wasn’t true in the earlier proprietary environment. In the event of a crash, skills are available throughout the campus to resolve issues immediately. With Red Hat, our dependence on support calls to proprietary vendors has been eliminated completely,” adds Sanghi.

“Another benefit of using a certified platform like Enterprise Linux is that third party HPCC software for resource allocation and node management run without any problems,” adds Pande.

A critical requirement at the time of setting up the two Linux clusters was scalability of usage. The institute currently has 100 users who access the HPC laboratory. In the next six months, the figure is expected to scale to 300.

“While designing the solution, we wanted to make sure that we could extract maximum throughput, to the last drop. Enterprise Linux coupled with our high speed servers have allowed us to support multiple applications and users simultaneously,” explains Sanghi.

With the new 64-bit HPCC environment powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, computation time has been reduced by 50%. “Applications that typically used to take 3-4 weeks to run earlier, now take less than two weeks,” he adds.

Future Plans

With a 6 TB SAN already in place to support the 64-bit cluster, IIT Kanpur’s storage requirements are in the process of scaling rapidly.

“Red Hat’s Global File System would be a nice filesystem to have and we are actively considering it. Also, new technologies like Xen virtualization, Stateless Linux, SystemTap, etc. are exciting to look forward to in the next Red Hat releases,” adds Sanghi.

Conclusion

The freedom and flexibility offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux has allowed IIT Kanpur to setup two of the most popular Linux HPC clusters in the country, which have contributed significantly to next generation research projects.