Dell's Grid Consolidation Boosts Performance and Generates IT Savings

By Mainstay Partners

Founded in 1984, Dell Inc. rose quickly to market dominance by selling standards-based computer products and services directly to customers. Dell's one-to-one relationship with customers, coupled with its ability to keep costs low by its own use of information technology and effectively managing its supply chain, has helped fuel its growth. Today Dell operates one of the highest-volume Internet commerce sites in the world.

The fast growth, however, was putting a strain on the existing infrastructure in Dell's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, which generates $9.7 billion, or nearly one-quarter of Dell's total revenue per year. More than 1,200 decision makers in the region rely on reports and business intelligence generated by a large-scale internal data repository called Eurostar.

To accommodate the region's fast growth, Dell had expanded the Eurostar European reporting server to operate on four servers, each running a separate copy of the database. The distributed system required constant data replication to keep the data repositories in sync. But with system usage surging, updates to the databases became harder to execute. The databases often fell out of sync, affecting data quality and consistency. In addition, poorly constructed queries could make the system hang, causing outages.

The fragmented system architecture meant that Dell's IT staff increasingly had to address bottlenecks by manually reorganizing table space, provisioning additional storage, and continually restarting and resynchronizing databases. The result: It was becoming harder for Eurostar's managers to meet internal service-level agreements with users in the EMEA region.

Consolidation replaces fragmentation
Dell's solution for Eurostar called for replacing the existing fragmented infrastructure with a consolidated system built around Oracle grid technology running Linux Red Hat Advanced Server. The new system features a cluster of Dell PowerEdge servers powering Oracle Database 10g with Real Application Clusters configured to operate as a single pool of processing power in combination with a high-capacity EMC storage array. The entire system is centrally managed through Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control.

The company successfully consolidated on the new platform in March 2004, moving from four standalone databases to a single clustered database, and from a complex siloed computing environment to a more easily managed, single, consolidated system. "What we've done is simplify our environment," says Brian Koster, IT director for data management services at Dell. "Part of the reason we save is that we have fewer moving parts, greater flexibility and more manageability."

The consolidation immediately removed Eurostar's speed and capacity limitations and laid the groundwork for continued growth. Now Dell can easily expand the system simply by adding more Dell servers to the cluster, paying as it grows. "With Eurostar, we are proving the power of "scale out" versus "scale up" with a growing terabyte-plus system," Koster says.

Clear ROI
Mainstay Partners, an independent consulting firm, documented a number of performance improvements in the consolidated cluster, ranging from higher system availability and faster data processing to streamlined infrastructure management. The new efficiencies have translated into cost savings, as Dell's IT staff shifts from system troubleshooting and maintenance to delivering better business intelligence. As Maria Church, product manager in Dell's EMEA region, says, "In moving to 10g we are able to concentrate on improving reports for our users instead of constant firefighting."

Productivity gains were derived from Oracle Database 10g's Automatic Storage Management feature, which simplifies the job of provisioning and managing storage space. "Oracle Automatic Storage Management is wonderful," says Gautam Reddy, senior database administrator at Dell. "We no longer need rebalancing of table space."

Smoother system performance is evidenced by the sharp decline in daily trouble tickets. Mainstay estimates Dell would have had to hire at least one half-time employee to handle the extra issues. Staff can also perform information loads and roll-ups about two hours faster with the consolidated grid system, a 25 percent improvement.

The study showed that consolidating with Oracle has been a boon for end users. Daily reports are running faster and are available three to four hours earlier, a 50 percent improvement. This has led to greater productivity and faster, more-informed decision making, managers said.

According to Mainstay, Dell should expect to gain approximately $7.15 million in cumulative benefits over five years from its Eurostar consolidation project. (See Table 1 for a complete, five-year breakdown of Dell's return on investment compared to the cost of running the previous system.)

The savings will come from a combination of labor productivity savings and other cost avoidance as a result of more-efficient system management. Dell will also see software cost savings from retiring multiple database licenses and associated maintenance fees. Future software savings will arise from avoiding the purchase of additional licenses to meet the need for new standalone data repositories.

Dell will also benefit from hardware cost avoidance as a result of its ability to purchase additional hardware in cost-effective increments and spread data-storage needs across a single storage array.

Dell's Eurostar consolidation project is expected to generate $3.3 million in net benefits over five years, achieving an overall ROI of 172 percent and an internal rate of return of 52 percent. The investment is expected to pay for itself in 19 months.

Table 1: Dell Moves to Oracle Grid: Five-Year Cost-Benefit Analysis¹