Sun Helps UGS Corp. Realize Massive Cost Savings by
Reducing Server Sprawl
Peak business activity at the end of each month, quarter and year puts
added pressure on business-critical applications and the server systems
that run them. The greater demand threatens to erode performance of Oracle,
SAP and other ERP, CRM and HR applications at exactly those times when
the business needs it most. Accordingly, IT needs to be prepared with
enough server horsepower to meet peak demands, even as business needs
constantly change and new applications roll out to users.
At UGS, this challenge was complicated by business growth and the numerous
acquisitions the company made on its climb to market leadership. New
servers kept coming into the company, creating a mixture of hundreds of
servers with different operating environments and different levels of
reliability and price-performance. As the business grew, this sprawling
server environment became increasingly inflexible, sluggish, and costly
to operate and maintain.
To counter this acute case of server sprawl, the UGS IT team in 2005
launched an initiative to migrate their Oracle and SAP applications off
old hardware and consolidate servers as much as possible. Goals included
reduced costs for server administration and maintenance, improved
price-performance, and greater flexibility to prepare for peak periods
and meet increasing user needs. Additionally, UGS recognized the need for
a more cost-effective way to continually scale and adapt its server
environment to keep pace with business expansion and accommodate new
applications and upgrades from SAP, Oracle and other vendors.
To realize these goals, UGS turned to one of its primary server vendors,
Sun Microsystems. The Sun Software Express for Solaris program met an
important need for UGS in allowing them to download portions of the Sun
Solaris 10 operating environment ahead of its general release and test
it with Oracle and SAP applications. Following this evaluation, UGS
arrived at a strategy to increase efficiency and flexibility and reduce
operating costs: Leverage the Solaris 10 Operating System and consolidate
many servers onto eight Sun Fire V440z servers and one x4100 x64 (x86,
64-bit) server.
This new virtualized environment enables UGS to deploy, isolate and move
applications rapidly in order to optimally prepare for surges in network
usage. Solaris Containers—Sun’s virtualization and software
partitioning technology—provide UGS with exceptional flexibility in
load balancing that has increased server utilization by 25 percent. The
improved flexibility and efficiency, as well as the dramatic reduction
in servers used, is expected to bring UGS more than $300,000 in cost
savings due to reduced maintenance, operational and administration costs.
While reining in server sprawl and the related costs, UGS has ensured high
levels of performance for its Oracle and SAP applications through periods
of peak demand and all phases of its business. UGS now provisions servers
faster, manages operations like disaster recovery more efficiently, and
continues to run Oracle and SAP at peak performance. It’s more proof that
Solaris 10 is the industry’s best performing yet affordable operating
system for data centers today.