The Itanium Solutions Blog

Earlier this month it was announced that Oracle Database 11g Release 2 version (11.2.0.1) has now been certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0, 12.1) on the HP-UX Itanium platform. E-Business Suite certified platforms, also called “Rapid Install Supported,” are platforms where there is a corresponding release package and both the application and database tiers of E-Business Suite are supported. Linux Itanium and Microsoft Windows Itanium are currently Oracle certified as Database Tier Only.

Read more about the Oracle certification levels here.

Two recent posts on the SAP Community Network blog offer some good insight on designing and running various computing environments on Itanium. Zoran Popovic is a Senior Systems Engineer at Hemofarm, an international pharmaceutical group based in Serbia. The content is geared toward those who own SAP on Itanium and Windows, and for those interested in SAP, Itanium and virtualization.

In “SAP, Linux, Virtualization and - Itanium …” Zoran talks about how his firm’s IT infrastructure, originally based on 10 Integrity servers with HP-UX, then Windows, has grown and evolved over the years. Today, five years later, their system is twice as large with a 1TB database. Zoran states:

Hemofarm’s SAP landscape is quite diverse and currently consists of: ERP systems, BI systems, CEN system, NW04, Solution Manager, EWA, monitoring, SAP routers, SAP Web Dispatchers, network printing servers, and different sandbox and other systems.
The main argument for Itanium system application is usage within OLTP systems and databases. In order to address low server utilization rates, Zoran suggests that consolidated OS environments be isolated and that is usually done through some form of virtualization.

In a follow up post “SAP, Linux, Virtualization and - Itanium … continued” he illustrates some new findings and results from the system and speaks to those interested in SAP with virtualization about moving from Windows or Unix to Linux.

Some approximate tests were run and improvised benchmarks with virtualized and bare metal SAP systems are posted for ERP, ERM, and ERC. The goal was to make a comparison with similar bare metal systems and different platforms — not making exact results comparable with some official tests.

About Itanium in the data center, Zoran States:

Zoran is interested in making further inquiries and welcomes any suggestions and recommendations both about benchmarking and this environment in general.

Read Zoran’s posts in full here:

SAP, Linux, Virtualization and - Itanium …
SAP, Linux, Virtualization and - Itanium … continued.

Well now that 2010 is off  and running, its a great time to be thinking about and planning your database upgrades on Itanium. In case you aren’t aware,  Oracle 11g Release 2 is now available for HP-UX on Itanium with new features that will help customers to reduce costs, increase mission-critical performance, as well as increasing flexibility, scalability and manageability. For more info on the new 11g release, visit the  Oracle.com  11g site and/or download the new release for Itanium.

I’d like to share with the Itanium Solutions blog a mission-critical Itanium deployment from Taiwan. Taiwan’s new Labor Pension Act was set to take effect on October 1, 2008. Taiwan’s Bureau of Labor Insurance (BLI) chose to implement the National Pension System (NPS) project on Itanium 2 Unix-based servers NEC NX7700i series servers, 32 single socket servers with Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 2 processors running on HP-UX 11.23, with Oracle’s 10g R2 database Enterprise Edition plus Real Application Cluster (RAC), Oracle’s 10g Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition, and NEC GlobalMaster system management software.

NPS serves Taiwan’s citizens who are between 15 and 65 years old and who do not participate in other programs including Labor Insurance, Farmer’s Health Insurance, Government Employee’s Insurance or Insurance for Military Personnel. The system consists of a large database which contains personal information for Taiwan’s entire population. For requirements of high performance, stable operations, high availability, and expandability, NPS is designed to provide service to both external users (the general public) as well as internal users (The Bureau of Labor Insurance). There are a total of eight Itanium-based servers used for the Application Server, the Portal Server, and the Database Server. The configuration also includes NEC’s Express5800 Xeon-based servers and NEC’s iStorage disk arrays.

By adopting the Intel® Itanium® 2 processor, we were able to take advantage of the processor’s high-end computing power and reduce the time required to process intensive SQL statements and API algorithms. Thus we increased efficiency and minimized the time needed to process over four million insurance policies. The system enables members to make on-line pension applications and search for their information via the Internet, as well as from terminals installed in all BLI offices. The provision of Internet-based applications and searches is expected to alleviate congestion at customer service counters and deliver improved convenience for members.

The results delivered by the NEC solution are remarkable. NEC NX7700i series servers can automatically detect malfunctions in the hardware before an outage occurs which minimizes downtime. This allows the Itanium 2 processors to exploit their maximum potential. Preliminary performance testing has demonstrated that the system provides impressive results. From the results observed in response time for insert/update/modify commands, the system is quite remarkable. With continuous data insertions for an extended period of time, there are no failed records. And the average response time is under two seconds.

The National Pension System powered by NEC’s Itanium-based servers provides exceptional performance, availability, and scalability and meets all of the mission critical needs of the Bureau of Labor Insurance in Taiwan.

-Emily Chou, Supervisor, IT Platform SI Business Group, NEC Taiwan Ltd.

Enterprise customers with data protection requirements may want to consider Oracle® Secure Backup 10.3. It’s a centralized tape backup solution that provides enterprise class data protection across the entire IT environment by leveraging backup encryption, tape vaulting and advanced support of virtual tape libraries. With this latest release announced on 9/22/09, platform support has been expanded to include HP-UX Itanium.

Read the entire release here.