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What began as an effort to upgrade and consolidate an existing eServer iSeries® and pSeries® infrastructure supporting business-critical systems unveiled an open-source solution. In the end, Flintshire County Council chose the Linux™ operating system (OS) as its new supported platform, opening a range of possibilities.
United Kingdom's Flintshire County Council in North East Wales serves as the local authority for 147,000 inhabitants. With an annual budget of around $273 million, the council is responsible for the upkeep of the county’s schools, environment and local road network. The council’s 7,500 employees provide many social services, collect taxes and maintain Flintshire County’s extensive range of leisure facilities.
To adequately support all of these functions, the council maintains approximately 350 business-critical information systems including systems that manage finance, revenue collection, benefits, social care, housing management and school support. The system applications were running on a variety of OS/400®, AIX® and Microsoft® Windows® servers.
Around a year ago, the council decided it was time to consolidate its server infrastructure. "We were an existing iSeries and pSeries customer," says John Thomas, operational services manager for Flintshire County Council. "Both of those platforms [iSeries and pSeries] have their own strategic directions. We were keen on trying to bring them together to improve manageability and we could see that was what IBM -- one of our key strategic technology providers -- was doing."
The idea was that Flintshire would upgrade two iSeries 825 systems to two eServer i5 570 systems. The i570s employ IBM POWER5® microprocessors, the ninth generation of 64-bit processors from IBM. The POWER5 architecture represents a new approach to enterprise computing, enabling Linux, AIX and i5/OS® to run natively and share fractions of a processor. When Flintshire upgraded its iSeries servers, it was able to consolidate an older AS/400 720 and several AIX systems running on end-of-life RS/6000* SP hardware onto the new platform.
The new infrastructure promised several benefits including increased capacity and improved resilience since the two servers would be installed in separate datacenters and mirror each other. Moreover, since the entire infrastructure would reside on a single physical server, management would be simplified. |
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Flintshire kicked off the migration project last September. A pair of identically configured i570 systems were delivered, and the most up-to-date versions of the OSs—i5/OS V5R3 and AIX 5.3—were installed. Both machines went live in early November. Within three days, the first AIX application, which manages the scheduling of school buses, was in operation. “It was not the most critical application,” Thomas says, "but an important one. And one that we felt comfortable with."
From that point, Flintshire steadily migrated its applications to the new infrastructure. The i570s were selected to run clustered, fully redundant Domino® partitions, serving 2,500 Lotus® Notes® clients supported by 300 Domino databases. Additionally, several major financial and administrative systems formerly running on the AS/400 720 have been migrated. "Since March we have not run any applications on the RS/6000 platform," Thomas notes.
In many ways, Flintshire’s server-consolidation effort followed a predictable trajectory: A longtime IBM customer that has a close relationship with IBM steps up and moves to the latest, state-of-the art technology. However, this trajectory takes a twist.
As a part of its server-consolidation effort, the council was also looking to migrate file and print serving from a Novell infrastructure to Windows. But, Thomas says, "What I didn't want to do is to replace a large number of Novell servers with an even larger number of Windows servers."
Since the council had made a strategic commitment to Active Directory, a component of the Windows 2000 architecture, Thomas knew that he had to support a Windows front end for file and print serving. But he wanted to explore the possibility of using Linux for the file- and print-serving platform and seamlessly integrating it with the Windows infrastructure. "We did not have any Linux [instances] at all in the shop," he says. "But we put it in as something we would like to do." In reality, his plate was full with the rest of the migration project.
Last January, working with its key IBM business partner, Real Solutions, Flintshire installed its first Linux partition using SUSE LINUX and Samba, an open-source software solution that integrates Windows file and print serving with other OSs. "We did not have a lot of experience in this area, but were advised that SUSE was right for us," Thomas says.
After installing and configuring the file-serving capability, Thomas tested it for several months. "We got the integration with Active Directory working seamlessly and felt comfortable with the technology," he says. "We feel very comfortable delivering the file serving underpinning our Windows 2000 file-serving infrastructure on a Linux partition." |
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The move to Linux as the platform for file serving has dramatically increased the IT infrastructure’s service level. By allocating a Linux partition on the second i570, Thomas is able to offer resilience and high availability that wasn't previously possible. "If a file server went down, it may have been only one of 30, but for the people who used it, it was all they had," he says.
The new setup includes automatic failover between servers. While still in the pilot stage, Thomas is evaluating data-replication technologies including rsync, the open-source data-replication solution. In essence, the move to Linux as the underlying platform has shifted file serving from being a departmental solution to an enterprise solution. "We have gone from a situation in which I had racks of Novell-based servers and was looking to put in racks of Windows servers to provide the same level of service to having one Linux partition. And with a second Linux partition, we're adding value," he notes. Moreover, the Windows servers that would've been used to support file serving have been redeployed to other uses, resulting in a significant net savings in investment.
Despite the lack of Linux experience, with the help of mentoring and consulting from both IBM and Real Solutions and receiving formal training, Flintshire's IT team has acquired the necessary skills to support the infrastructure relatively easily. Traditionally, Thomas notes, support was organized according to computer platform. There were teams for the iSeries, pSeries and xSeries® / Windows environments. With the phasing out of the pSeries platform, the AIX support team assumed responsibility for Linux. "What they are now is a UNIX® support team,® Thomas says. "A lot of what they see in Linux is familiar to them."
Because AIX is a stable and robust UNIX environment, the biggest concern was the stability and functionality of Linux. Would it be as good as AIX? "To be fair," Thomas says, "Linux is very good." |
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As the comfort level with Linux has grown, Thomas has begun to consider other uses for the platform. "We've become so comfortable in such a short period of time with Linux on POWER5 that we're starting to look at using it in a wider strategic manner," he says. The pilot project is using Linux as the platform of a WebSphere® Portal project. "The idea is that we are looking to deliver all our technologies in a completely mobile way,&quit; Thomas says. "We try to use thin clients. We use Citrix a lot. We try to avoid client/server applications."
The WebSphere Portal initiative is an expansion of that effort. "It's about making everything available via a Web browser to every device," Thomas says. "It's about bringing together all the business applications and providing a truly mobile environment."
IBM WebSphere Portal technology offers several advantages for the project including single sign-on (SSO) for applications and the capability for users to configure their screens. "When you start to take people's applications away from the desktop, you can't be too rigid," Thomas says. "People don't like that. [WebSphere] Portal allows users to tailor their interface."
Ironically, prior to the consolidation project, Flintshire wasn't considering Linux as the platform for the WebSphere Portal project. But given the new infrastructure, Linux can provide more processing power at a lower cost.
In the current setup, each i570 has 18 partitions made up of 10 i5/OS partitions, six AIX partitions and two Linux partitions. "We have load balancing, failover and dynamic CPU assignment," Thomas points out.
Since 90 percent of the business applications now run on this platform, Thomas can allocate the processing muscle according to demand. Moreover, processing power can be shared across partitions. Consequently, when batch processing occurs each night, processing power from partitions not supporting batch applications can be used. "It is an extremely flexible environment," he says.
In the final analysis, the move to incorporate Linux into the infrastructure raised little controversy at Flintshire. Linux has a high profile in the public sector in the United Kingdom. "There has been a big push toward open source led by the central government." Thomas says. In addition, several neighboring local governments have incorporated Linux in a limited way and Thomas consulted with them. |
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| And though perhaps not originally foreseen or planned, the move to Linux promises to have a significant long-term impact. "Within our IT strategy, we only support certain operating systems," Thomas says. "We now support Linux. It opens up a whole new raft of applications. If we are comfortable with an application, it could wind up on Linux." |
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| Elliot King is an associate professor at Loyola College in Maryland where he specializes in new communication technology. Elliot has written five books and several hundred articles about the emergence and use of new computing and communication technology. Elliot can be reached at eking212@comcast.net. |
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