University of Strathclyde

Improving Performance, Scalability, and Disaster Recovery

The University has a mission of providing useful learning, making higher education available to all, and combining excellence with relevance.

The University’s Information Technology department was first in the U.K. to implement a gigabit network backbone and has recently become the first HE establishment in Europe to introduce a 10gbit backbone. Prior to the new setup, the machines running the University’s Financials, Student Admission, Estates, Residence and Catering, and Personnel applications were clustered in one of the University’s two data centers using Oracle Parallel Server, the Oracle product that allows multiple servers to access a single database.

In the fall of 2000, a collection of motivations compelled the university to seek a better solution. “First, we wanted to improve the performance of our applications,” began Alan Drain, Deputy Director Information Technology Services for Strathclyde. “Secondly, we wanted to improve the scalability of our solution—especially horizontal scalability. We have a second data center that’s at the other end of the campus, some 1km from the first, and we wanted to cluster servers located in both centers for high availability, and to continue using Oracle Parallel Server with them. That wasn’t possible with the previous machines. Thirdly—and most importantly—our auditors had recommended that our disaster recovery provisions should be incorporated into our new solution.”

Sun Proves Best from Viewpoints of TCO, Overall Cost-Effectiveness, and Simplicity of Support

The University composed a detailed set of specifications for its new system and requested tenders from leading vendors. The request for tender was separated into two major subsystems, one for servers and one for storage, and vendors were invited to bid for either or both sets of requirements.

“Sun had invested a lot of time and energy beforehand understanding our requirements, and it showed in the quality of their proposal,” said Drain. “Sun’s proposal was best in virtually every respect. We projected what our costs would be with each vendor for the next five to seven years, and on a pure TCO basis Sun was the lowest of all bidders. Sun also proved most cost-effective when we considered costs and benefits together providing the best value for money solution.”

“In addition, Sun offered us a single point of responsibility for servers, storage, and—via the VOS Initiative—the products of our other two key vendors, Oracle and Veritas,” Drain continued. “Contrast that with the situation we’d have had with a mixed vendor environment when it comes to issues of interoperability. Sun is the one vendor that takes responsibility and provides support for every product in our stack.”

Sun Services Makes Remote Clustering Work with Oracle Parallel Server

The most demanding aspect of the system’s deployment was the cluster implementation, for which the University worked closely with the expertise of Sun Services. These consultants from Sun were responsible for all aspects of design, implementation, installation, testing, and commissioning of the production system. Sun Services installed a Sun Fire 3800 server in each of the two data centers and connected them over the campus network using Sun Cluster 3.0 software and Oracle Parallel Server—a combination that had never been implemented over such a long distance. “Our Sun consultants were definitely pushing the envelope, but they figured out how to meet our needs and aspirations,” reported Drain. “As a result, we were the first institution in the world to connect such widely separated servers in a high-availability environment that uses Sun Cluster software and retains the advantages of Oracle Parallel Server.”

The clustered Sun Fire servers run the mission-critical financials and student admissions applications, all of which were internally developed. In addition, the university replaced its library system with a third Sun Fire 3800 server and a Sun Fire V880 server in a loosely coupled failover system with mirrored disks. These systems run the Voyager library application from Endeavor Information Systems.

The University also deployed four Sun Fire 280R servers. One is for new application development. Two others run Oracle Web applications, which are based on the Java™ technology pioneered by Sun. The final Sun Fire 280R server runs system backups using Veritas NetBackup software and a Sun StorEdge DLT tape library. Strathclyde also uses Veritas Volume Manager for mirroring data on its 4.5ter abytes of Sun SotrEdge T3 disk ararys. All the servers are based on the UltraSPARC™ III microprocessor and run the Solaris™ 8 Operating Environment. Because these servers are running on the same Operating Environment, the resources needed to manage the systems are lowered, thereby reducing the overall cost of operations.

The system was implemented in stages throughout most of 2001, culminating with the production deployment of the cluster solution in September. The university engaged Sun Services to provide Sun SpectrumSM service for all Sun products under the Gold support plan.

20- to 30-Fold Performance Improved; Perfect Availability Record

“Everyone here who is involved with the system is very pleased with the results,” said Drain. “The performance improvement is phenomenal. Response time is fully 20-fold to 30-fold faster than the old systems. Our users have commented very favorably about the improvement.”

“The system’s reliability has been outstanding,” Drain continued. “The use of clustering has achieved zero service loss during the year since we went live.”

Strathclyde plans to extend the benefits of its investment in SAN technology even further, bringing high availability to student file store and the corporate email system. As a step in that direction, the University expects to soon deploy the Oracle9i RAC (Real Application Cluster) database software. For these and other enhancements to its IT infrastructure, Strathclyde looks forward to a continuation of strong help from its technological ally, Sun. “We’re very pleased with the entire process of working with Sun, and we’re looking forward to a lot more mutual successes,” said Drain in conclusion.