IT Infrastructure
authorization solutions. And we’ve enabled single sign-on using this whole stack, a straightforward task with our many home-grown applications. Suddenly it looks like it’s an integrated stack of applications. I love it.”
Standardize and Virtualize for Improved Performance Although a small portion of the central IT division remains to be standardized on Sun technology, Argonne is already realizing significant benefits in many areas. Oracle Solaris 10 virtualization features provide the assurance of high availability and high hardware utilization for the business applications it supports.
“There are a lot of different reasons why your environment should be virtualized,” Salbego said. “For us, it’s the mobility of applications. We can’t have things going down.”
Argonne has also been taking advantage of the Oracle Solaris’ ZFS advanced file system to help ensure data integrity on its Oracle
Databases. ZFS seamlessly integrates solid state drives (SSDs) to improve application performance and operating efficiency.
With a standardized infrastructure largely built on Oracle technology, the Argonne IT team is confident that it can continue to deliver an open, standards-based, scalable, integrated IT capability to its high-tech users.
As to the future, Salbego said, “Our two primary development languages are Java and Ruby. Our Java developers use Java Application Server 8.1 as our application server of choice. We’ve been experimenting a bit with Oracle GlassFish open-source application server and are in the process of building out a new
Winter 2010
infrastructure based on it. This environment is also load-balanced for high availability and redundancy.”
Oracle GlassFish incorporates the technology of the Sun Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 Application Server and its commercial counterpart, the Oracle GlassFish Server. It provides a foundation based on open-standards Java technology that can be provisioned using open- source products.
“We love the strategy of being part of a community that drives the creation of standards-based technology and offers it up as open source on the market,” Salbego said. “Argonne takes a very hands-on approach to our infrastructure and development. We rely on our own people to solve our problems, and take pride in that. The manner in which Oracle delivers, supports, and opens its products enables us to use that strategy with great success.”
By implementing components of the Sun Java Enterprise System suite, Argonne was able to provide a scalable and reliable solution for its integrated Web portal, enabling Argonne to synchronize its IT investment with its business priorities and user requirements.
Salbego said, “The feedback we have gotten from our user community indicates that the SSO Web portal is a big success. Late in 2009, we implemented OpenSSO Express 8, which will allow us to bring our Apache-based applications, such as Wiki and many other home-grown applications, into the SSO fold in the future.”
The Web portal has helped Argonne consolidate its Java support contracts, which now provides predictable licensing fees.
Pallan pointed out another important outcome for Argonne, “The subscription model for deploying Sun Java Enterprise System software was much more economical than purchasing components separately, as offered by other vendors. As a result, we estimate a cost savings of more than US$50,000 per year in licensing and support.”
Argonne also expects to achieve a 100% return on investment in 18 months.
Additionally, Salbego said, “We implemented Oracle’s Sun MySQL Monitor with great success, and the wealth of information provided by this tool is enormous. We also implemented MySQL replication using Oracle’s Sun MySQL Enterprise to improve our disaster recovery posture. The fact that we have Oracle MySQL Enterprise support available if needed helps greatly.”
Salbego concluded, “If you add up all the benefits, our decision to standardize using Sun products was a wise one.”
Why Oracle? To begin its standardization efforts, Argonne received bids from Sun (now Oracle), HP, Dell, and other vendors for hardware. It ultimately chose Oracle’s Sun technology because Sun had been helping Argonne fulfill its mission with innovative software, hardware, and support services for more than 20 years. According to Salbego, it made good business sense to stay with proven technology in standardizing the hardware environment.
“We wanted something that was reliable and competitively priced, and we knew we would get that with Oracle and its Sun technology,” Salbego said.
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