Success Story

Major Software Company Deploys Solaris PC NetLink Software to Reduce System Administration Costs

"Our organization is facing incredible growth in NT servers.We believed with PC NetLink we could substantially reduce the number of machines needed to host the central services traditionally provided by multiple NT servers."

Anthony Van der Maren
Senior IT Engineer
Oracle Belgium

Oracle Corporation's operations in the Benelux countries rely on a network of servers whose core functions were controlled in the past by a number of different types of servers, some running Windows NT and some running UNIX®. In order to improve system administration efficiency, cut costs, improve stability and reliability, and boost performance--while retaining full NT functionality--Oracle is replacing these servers with Sun Enterprise servers equipped with Solaris PC NetLink software from Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Oracle met all its goals in the initial Solaris PC NetLink software deployment in Luxembourg, where all network services were migrated to a single Sun Enterprise 250 server. To gain the same efficiency, uptime, and performance benefits, Oracle is now deploying Solaris PC NetLink software in its Belgian center.

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Explosion in Number of NT Servers Drives Corporate Directive to Find a Better Solution

Oracle Corporation provides the software that powers the Internet. Oracle's offering includes an Internet platform and an e-business suite that includes CRM, ERP and other solutions. Among the 145 countries where Oracle does business are the three Benelux countries. Oracle's base in Brussels manages operations in Belgium and Luxembourg, and is closely allied with its sister organization in The Netherlands.

The Belgium/Luxembourg network is administered by Anthony Van der Maren, Senior IT engineer. Until recently, Van der Maren's job entailed weekly trips to Luxembourg to deal with crashes and other administrative issues that resulted from the networking infrastructure in place, where central network services were performed by a combination of two Windows NT servers and an older Sun server. These services included remote file storage, network printing, dynamic addressing (DHPC) services, Windows Internet Name Service (WINS), and domain and user management. When Sun introduced its Solaris PC NetLink software, Oracle saw an opportunity to save substantially on system administration costs and improve stability at the same time.

"Traditionally, we worked around the scalability and reliability issues inherent in NT by splitting the load onto multiple single purpose dedicated machines for printing, PDC, BDC, and DHPC services," Van der Maren said. "Now there is no longer a reason to use the NT operating system for any of these traditional services. They can all be performed much more efficiently with Sun Enterprise servers, each of which now comes equipped with Solaris PC NetLink software at no additional charge. Our organization is facing incredible growth in NT servers, and we're under a corporate directive to dramatically reduce the number of data centers and servers we manage. Due to the Solaris Operating Environment's legendary scalability, reliability and remote administration capabilities, we believed we could substantially reduce the number of machines needed to host the central services traditionally provided by multiple NT servers."

Oracle targeted Luxembourg first, where they installed a Sun Enterprise 250 server in late 1999 and quickly migrated all the older Sun server's applications to it. Within two days, Solaris PC NetLink software was up and running--initially in parallel with the NT servers. "Everything worked perfectly on Sun, so we soon unplugged the NT boxes, " Van der Maren reported. "One reason we performed the migration so quickly and cleanly was the excellent support we received from our local Sun personnel."

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Substantial Improvements in Administration Ease, Uptime, and Performance

"We've seen improvements in every respect, " Van der Maren continued. "Our uptime has been nearly perfect. Since the Solaris Operating Environment provides true multi-threading, it runs applications much more efficiently--resulting in a performance improvement of about 20 percent. With fewer, more stable servers that can be remotely administered, our system administration costs are way down. Instead of my weekly trips, I pay a visit to the Luxembourg site every couple of months--and even then it's mostly a courtesy call."

Based on this complete success, Oracle is now in the midst of a similar consolidation in Brussels, where a Sun Enterprise 4000 server with Solaris PC NetLink software will replace three NT servers and an older Sun server. Next will come the Netherlands operation, where Van der Maren's Dutch counterpart is preparing to follow suit.

In Van der Maren's judgment, Solaris PC NetLink software allows an organization to gain network reliability, reduce total cost of ownership, and improve uptime while fully interoperating with applications that rely on core NT services. "I'm a firm believer in working smarter, not harder. Some might call it being lazy to find ways to get more done in less time.If so, I believe that laziness is a virtue. Solaris PC NetLink software gives our users what they want--better reliability and performance--while saving money for Oracle by reducing my workload. I'm not a lazy system administrator--I'm a happy system administrator!"

"Solaris PC NetLink software allows an organization to gain network reliability, reduce total cost of ownership, and improve uptime while fully interoperating with applications that rely on core NT services."

Anthony Van der Maren
Senior IT Engineer
Oracle Belgium

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