CBR - ORACLE GRID SERIES PART III

The concept of grid technology prompts a futuristic vision of end users tapping into available computing resources from across the globe, but it can also deliver immediate benefits, such as the more efficient use of resources.

This is an issue being faced by all organisations regardless of their industry or size as IT budgets continue to be pinched and businesses are looking to get more value from existing hardware and software investments. It is for this reason that Andrew Sutherland, Oracle VP of technology, EMEA, views the adoption of grid technology as "inevitable".

"It boils down to being more efficient," he says. "I believe people will use this as the default standard way in which computing resources will be provided to end users. Grid will boil down to being the most efficient model."

Oracle has been a grid computing convert since 2003 when it launched its 10g product line, delivering grid computing capabilities in its Database, Application Server and JDeveloper products, as well as introducing new technologies such as the Enterprise Manager Grid Control framework.

Together these technologies enable users to create a pool of information and data resources that can be shared across multiple applications, improving the utilisation of the underlying processing power and increasing business flexibility to develop and deploy new application services based on a modular and scalable architecture.

This enterprise-focused view of the grid is already producing results. Sutherland cites the example of computer game software developer Electronic Arts, an early adopter of enterprise grid computing concepts for the launch of its Sims Online massive multiplayer game.

The creation of the service platform for The Sims Online predated Oracle's 10g technologies but made use of the Oracle9i and Real Application Clusters (RAC) predecessors, as well as Red Hat Linux. It created a database cluster using a shared storage system that could be scaled out as The Sims Online picked up and more processing power was required.

The benefits of taking this approach, as opposed to conventional large symmetrical multi-processing servers running Unix, which were also considered, were detailed in a study by independent IT investment consultant Mainstay Partners.

While the software costs for the 9i RAC configuration in year one were actually more expensive than the Unix comparison (by $790,000), savings were made in hardware and maintenance costs in the first year ($2.16m and $260,000 respectively), as well as ongoing maintenance savings during the first five years ($560,000).

But Mainstay found that there were also significant staffing cost savings related to a reduction in the number of database administrators required for the platform ($1.93m), despite additional training required to manage the new configuration ($720,000 in total).

The result, according to Mainstay, was an overall cost saving for Electronic Arts of $3.4m over five years. As these figures indicate, the majority of the upfront savings from this project came from hardware savings, and Sutherland states that a new project such as this is the perfect way to prove the benefits of grid technology.

"In most cases the best way of going about it is to look at new projects, for example if you're going to re-platform," he says. "It can be advantageous specifically to look at more than one application at the same time."

Another significant opportunity is a server consolidation project, where there is the potential to reduce hardware costs up front before extending the benefits into the more efficient use of that processing power, according to Sutherland.

"People see if you are refreshing hardware, that you get the hardware cost savings up front. With Oracle grid you can make these low-cost computers work in harmony and act as a single resource."

A more recent example of this strategy in action comes from Dell, which moved its European sales operations from Unix-on-RISC to Linux on its own PowerEdge servers in 2004 in order to extend its online ordering system beyond a limit of 6,000 concurrent users.

The company deployed Oracle's Database, RAC and Enterprise Manager 10g products as part of the new architecture that enabled it to double session capacity to 12,000, increase daily order volume, with automatic workload distribution and balancing across the PowerEdge cluster.

According to Mainstay, the deployment will pay for itself within 12 months (see table), and produce total net benefits of $4.7m over five years, a return on investment of 173%.

Dell's 12 Months Breakeven with Grid

Source: Mainstay Partners/Dell

Figures like these will likely spark interest from many CIOs, but Oracle's Sutherland maintains that they are just the quantifiable side of the equation. "Availability and scalability are more difficult to quantify, and change depending on the organisation and what the alternative is," he says.

"It's about reducing the crude stairway of scalability with a fine ramp," he says of the ability to add more processing power to a grid-enabled cluster, rather than migrating to larger and more powerful SMP server systems.

Of course, adding more systems to a cluster increases the potential complexity of the architecture, but Sutherland maintains that properly managed, the grid can prove a more efficient architecture.

"That is something that's fundamental to the success of grid, being able to manage it," he says. "But if you're managing that effectively and efficiently, grid is the conclusion to come to. Right now this is the only model that will give you the sort of savings organisations are looking for."

The importance of management is indicated by Oracle's introduction of Enterprise Manager and its Grid Control feature, which took Oracle into systems management. The company has been working hard behind the scenes to ensure that this technology complements existing systems management investments.

"We've invested a great deal to ensure that our software applies software standards and make it modular," says Sutherland, adding that the technology is architected to work with systems management products such as HP's OpenView.

"With Grid Control you can view your Oracle grid and have some control over your HP machines, or vice versa," he says, maintaining that the user interface chosen to view resources is open to administrators. "It's very much an addition to existing resources. You can see many of the other tools fitting in to Grid Control, and you can see it the other way round."

This interoperability has been enabled by a reliance on standards, which are being developed by the cross-vendor bodies such as the Global Grid Forum. "We sit on these standards bodies to ensure that we're quick off the blocks," says Sutherland.

"I know that in the marketplace the adoption of standards will help customers adopt technology like this. The barriers that were there a few years ago have come down, with software available to implement this off the shelf."