Migrating from x86 to Itanium
The Itanium architecture is known as a solid platform for data center consolidation projects and also for being a trusted foundation for mission-critical ERP applications. Two recent articles from Express Computer in India describe how two companies migrated their data center from x86 to Itanium-based systems.
Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals Limited, (CFCL)’s IT landscape consisted of disparate IT systems with standalone x86 servers running discrete homegrown applications spread across regional offices to manage its in-house financial and transactional systems. These standalone x86 servers, running at various utilization rates, had performance issues whenever the production demand was high. CFCL’s manufacturing plant servers ran commercial and other core applications alongside niche applications on x86 servers, making it difficult to consolidate data. “It was a case of too many servers, too many applications, and too much customization—leading to increased spending on maintenance,” said V S Rao, Manager–IT, CFCL. CFCL decided to mitigate unexpected risks through the installation of HP Integrity servers fitted with dual-core Intel Itanium processors and running HP-UX 11i v2 to ensure high availability and simpler management. Read the entire article here.
Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Limited (Café Coffee Day) is a fully integrated coffee company that manages growing, harvesting, roasting, blending, exporting and retailing of coffee. To manage its growing, multi-faceted and geographically dispersed business, the company realized it needed an integrated solution to handle production and supply chain management. This new ERP environment would be critical to the smooth running of its business, and the company placed great emphasis on selecting the best platform to run its SAP software to ensure the highest possible levels of protection for its ERP environment. Café Coffee Day uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Priority Support for SAP Applications. The company also worked with PSI Data System to handle the migration from the original Intel Xeon-based platform to an Itanium-based platform. Read the entire article here.