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Company Success Stories - ProQuest CSA
ProQuest CSA and the AMD Opteron™ Processor: A Winning Combination
Profile
ProQuest CSA
"The AMD Opteron™ processor allows us to conduct complex computing with fewer and much more efficient servers, thereby reducing power and cooling, as well as data center space, requirements. Combine these facts and we were able to increase our computing capacity while saving the company a substantial amount in IT spending. Needless to say, this is IT making a real difference at ProQuest CSA.
-- Bill Tripp, director, System Engineering, ProQuest CSA"
Challenge:
- Aging equipment was the foundation of an infrastructure tasked with delivering 20 percent annual increases in capacity. While the network was able to maintain acceptable performance levels, it was driving costs skyward for ProQuest CSA.
- Particularly vexing to the company were ever-increasing power and cooling bills which were rapidly growing out of control.
Solution:
- Collaborating with local system integrators, ProQuest CSA redesigned three core areas of its infrastructure: an Oracle® database environment; a High Density Server (HDS) environment; and a development environment. The final design was based on systems featuring AMD Opteron™ processors.
Impact:
- The AMD Opteron processor surpassed ProQuest CSA’s expectations, improving performance, increasing power and cooling efficiencies, and opening more data center space which resulted in a significant reduction in costs.
Organizational Profile
ProQuest CSA, part of Cambridge Information Group, was formed in 2007 through the merger of two leading and historic information technology firms: ProQuest Information and Learning and CSA. As ProQuest CSA, the company provides seamless access to and navigation of more than 125 billion digital pages of the world’s scholarship, delivering it to the desktop and into the workflow of serious researchers in multiple fields, from arts and literature to science, technology and medicine.
ProQuest CSA’s vast content pools are available to researchers through libraries of all types and include the world’s largest digital newspaper archive, periodical databases comprising the output of more than 9,000 publishers and spanning more than 500 years, the preeminent dissertation collection and various other scholarly collections. Through the expertise of its business units, Serials Solutions and COS, ProQuest CSA provides technological tools that allow researchers and libraries to better manage and use their information resources.
Challenge
Through acquisition and organic growth, ProQuest CSA was experiencing massive increases in demand for capacity, at a rate of 20 percent per year. In order to support this demand, ProQuest CSA’s IT team managed hundreds of servers to sustain internal operations and more importantly support the tens of thousands of customers accessing the company’s award-winning applications such as ABI/INFORM® and ProQuest Medical Library™.
ProQuest CSA’s complex system was based on aging equipment which caused numerous challenges for the IT team. The older servers were generating massive power and cooling bills as well as logistical headaches. While currently performing admirably, the IT team knew the existing equipment would soon hinder performance and cause IT costs to rise further. If left unaddressed the situation would also eventually threaten product development as resources would have to be increasingly allocated to supporting ProQuest CSA’s infrastructure as opposed to developing new products.
Solution
ProQuest CSA identified three areas of focus and then determined that AMD64 technology provided the best cost/performance and performance-per-watt solution for the company. As such, ProQuest CSA implemented the following solutions:
- An Oracle® database environment hosted by AMD Opteron™ processor-based HP ProLiant® DL585 servers;
- A HDS (High Density Server) environment to power search, middleware and web servers, running on AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant DL385 servers; and
- A development environment supported by a VMWare® ESX server running on AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant DL585 servers.
Impact
The Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor surpassed ProQuest CSA’s expectations, improving performance, increasing power and cooling efficiencies, and opening more data center space with significant cost reductions. “The AMD Opteron processor allows us to conduct complex computing with fewer and much more efficient servers, thereby reducing power and cooling, as well as data center space, requirements,” said Bill Tripp, director, System Engineering, ProQuest CSA. “Combine these facts and we were able to increase our computing capacity while saving a substantial amount in IT spending. Needless to say, this is IT making a real difference at ProQuest CSA.”
Specific benefits per ProQuest CSA environment are as follows:
- The Oracle database environment: Deemed the company’s “crown jewels,” the databases support ProQuest CSA’s award-winning applications like ABI/INFORM, so the implementation had to be perfect. According to Tripp, it was. “Since we migrated two databases to the AMD Opteron processor-based servers, we have seen a marked improvement at a lower cost than the incumbent system,” he said. “The cost savings are seen through the combination of purchase price, reduced power and cooling requirements and licensing fees—an ideal situation for a high performance computing (HPC) environment.” Tripp elaborated on the efficiencies by stating that some processes are running significantly faster on the new AMD64-based systems.
- The HDS environment: ProQuest CSA began the AMD64 implementation with “search,” the company’s most processing- and I/O-intensive application. Upon incorporating the AMD Opteron processor-based blade servers, ProQuest CSA saw an increase in performance, a reduction in rack space, and less power and cooling needs—all at a lower total cost than its previous system. Tripp expects the AMD64 benefits to continue to grow. “AMD will play a huge role as we migrate our proprietary applications to a 64-bit architecture. I believe we will then see even greater performance and cost savings,” he said.
- The development environment: The virtualization solution proved to be optimal for the company’s remote development team. The new system, which now runs on just five servers, a dramatic reduction from the number one year ago, currently supports over 120 development systems with the capacity to support more in the future. The efficiencies allow the developers to test new applications in real time, without having to power down any servers, yielding better control over peaks in usage and better overall managed IT growth.
Tripp has been so pleased that he believes ProQuest CSA will increase its AMD Opteron processor footprint significantly in the upcoming year as incumbent systems come off lease. Specifically, Tripp is looking to implement Oracle Real Application Clusters® which he believes will take full advantage of the AMD Opteron processor to provide further benefits including efficiencies in power and cooling. “In the future, we will continue to consider all of our options but everyone will be running against AMD,” he said.
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. AMD is dedicated to driving open innovation, choice and industry growth by delivering superior customer-centric solutions that empower consumers and businesses worldwide. For more information, visit www.amd.com.
© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. |
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