eBay Inc

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You can find it on eBay – even if you didn’t know it existed. Recent listings have included a tunnel boring machine from the Chunnel project, a cup of water that once belonged to Elvis, and the Volkswagen that Pope Benedict XVI owned before he moved up to the Popemobile. More than one hundred million items are available at any given time, from the massive to the miniature, the magical to the mundane, on eBay – the world’s largest online marketplace.

And whether buyers are searching eBay for that one-in-a-million heirloom or just looking for the best deal on a used iPod or Xbox, it’s no secret that Sun Microsystems helps them find it – and buy it.

Look beyond the Web site and you'll find that Sun is everywhere at eBay: helping to power software development, cooling off the data center, speeding up applications, helping eBay manage data with disk and tape storage, speeding operations' time to market by quickly fulfilling hardware and being a critical part of eBay's team with onsite service resources.

Three keys to data center efficiency: standardize, standardize, standardize
An eBay representative explains how the online marketplace keeps its IT administration costs under control: “You can’t manage a thousand point solutions. Pick a platform that works for 95 percent of your business cases and make that your standard. Stick with it until you decide to migrate to take advantage of a technology advance that offers real and needed value.”

That's why eBay has tapped Sun for its search and database infrastructures. Sun provides a soup-to-nuts solution including servers, software, storage and services. And Sun's roadmap has more than once helped the e-commerce giant navigate its way to the right solution, just when eBay needed it, starting with the database servers.

eBay’s data center is way cool – literally
As eBay’s business continued to heat up, its database servers were working overtime – and so was the data center’s air conditioning system. But help was on the way. An eBay representative has found a way to put out the flames in eBay’s Oracle farm, thanks to the Sun Fire T2000 server, also known as Niagara.

Another recent Sun innovation, the Sun Fire X4100, is a workhorse on the search side. eBay has deployed more than 1,400 of the AMD-powered machines. eBay reports a significant reduction in TCO compared to the previous mid-range servers. “The Sun Fire X4100 packs so much power in such a small footprint that we don’t have enough network connections in the racks to allow us to fill them up,” says the eBay representative. “We never planned for this level of computing power.”

Sold on Solaris 10 and Sun Java System Identity Manager
What if every one of your business-critical applications suddenly ran faster, overnight? That’s what happened to eBay. Not long after retooling its search infrastructure with Sun Fire X4100 servers, the online marketplace upgraded to the Solaris 10 Operating System – and notched a 20 percent performance gain, across the board. Just as importantly, eBay’s IT staff has instant visibility into the performance of its applications with Solaris’ DTrace capability. eBay’s IT staff is so impressed, they’re planning to move the database infrastructure up to Solaris 10 soon.

eBay has recently chosen Sun Java System Identity Manager as the platform for revamping its identity management system. When fully deployed, Identity Manager will centrally manage the identities of more than 12,000 eBay employees and contractors.

Sun storage helps keep the store open
On a typical day, more than 100 million items are listed on eBay in tens of thousands of categories. To store that and other information, eBay turns to Sun for high-end storage, including the Sun StorageTek 9990 storage system, as well as tape archival with Sun StorageTek L700 tape libraries.

By standardizing on Sun storage and services, eBay is keeping up with explosive growth in storage-—over 50 percent annually—-with a relatively small team. Each eBay storage administrator manages an average of 160 terabytes of disk storage, several times the industry average (source: Strategic Research Corporation, “The Future of the Business Network”).

“More servers? We'll bring 'em right over.”
When you’re growing as fast as eBay, just getting the servers in the door can be a daunting challenge. Sun has worked with Sun Advantage Partners: Groupware Technology and Helio Solutions to build a highly responsive and effective channel that meets eBay’s need for speed.

The partners keep local stock and can deliver servers, configured and ready to install, in literally one hour. “Sun respected our existing relationships with resellers and didn’t pull the rug out from under them by going direct as our business grew,” says the eBay representative.

The sun never sets on Sun service
A multivendor environment can be challenging for any enterprise. eBay sidestepped that issue by tapping Sun Managed Services to be its primary responder and overall problem resolution coordinator for all problems in the database and search tiers.

With more than a dozen dedicated support personnel onsite in all of eBay's domestic locations, Sun makes sure that eBay stays focused on helping their customers perform transactions on the site, not solving problems. “Sun doesn’t get caught up in finger-pointing, they just fix whatever is broken, or find the right vendor who can,” explains the eBay representative. “They keep the infrastructure running smoothly so we can be thinking about the next big thing.”

Sun provides support under an annual contract, which also includes training. Sun has developed customized courses focused solely on eBay’s environment, maximizing the value of the time spent in the classroom. “The Solaris 10 class really impressed our team,” remarks the eBay representative. “We just brought on a new team in China, and they’ve taken advantage of Sun classes to get up to speed rapidly.”

Java keeps eBay.com developers wired
Sun’s presence at eBay extends beyond the database and search tiers – it literally touches every major software application at the online marketplace. In 2000, eBay’s previous C++ development environment was running low on energy in the face of accelerating growth, so the online marketplace poured itself a big cup of Java and never looked back. Now more than a thousand eBay software developers get their daily programming fix with Java. And thanks to Java’s inherent portability, eBay can move to new hardware to take advantage of new technology, packaging or pricing, knowing that its massive investment in software won’t go down the drain.

It’s all about relationships
What makes the eBay infrastructure ultimately successful is not just Sun products and services, but Sun people. “Sun has an absolutely amazing team working for eBay,” the eBay representative says. “They listen to us, anticipate our needs and make sure that they’ve got the resources and technology to meet those needs. We’re not just an account to them; Sun cares about eBay’s business.”