ISP EarthLink has purchased new SunTM systems, including two 24-CPU, 900 MHz Sun FireTM 6800 Midframe Servers, Sun StorEdgeTM 9960 Array system, configured in a Storage Attached Network (SAN) solution to run its billing and data warehousing applications.

EarthLink has needed to expand its billing system as its subscriber base has increased. EarthLink looked to Sun, given its binary compatible, scalable platform, SolarisTM Operating Environment, high performance capabilities, new UltraSPARCR 900 MHz processors, and its previous success in using SunTM systems.

• Sun Fire 6800 Servers and Sun StorEdge 9960 Systems Deliver on ROI-

As part of its network integration efforts, EarthLink selected a system comprised of two Sun Fire 6800 Servers and a SAN of Sun StorEdge 9960 Array systems, totaling 16 terabytes of highly reliable and easy to manage storage.

Using clustering software, the Sun Fire 6800 servers will be clustered to provide the highest availability, one serving production needs and the other providing failover protection. EarthLink will consolidate approximately 4.8 million customer records and will eventually be able to eliminate the last of its remote billing operations. The new system platform provides EarthLink with increased capacity to handle its immediate needs, while providing significant scalability to accommodate future growth.

"Deployment of the Sun StorEdge 9960 Array ran smoothly," stated Ron Williams, enterprise production services manager for EarthLink. "Thanks to Sun Professional ServicesSM Program's great support, we were able to install the Sun StorEdge 9960 Array and migrate over 4 TB of production data to it with less than two hours of system downtime. The entire project took less than three weeks from the moment we sent in the purchase order for the Sun StorEdge 9960 Array."

Upon deployment, the SAN immediately made a difference in system performance. Speed increased with the Sun StorEdge 9960 Array between 30 and 60 percent while running EarthLink applications. This benefited internal systems and online customer registration. With the success of the SAN, EarthLink is looking at other areas of the company, as well, that can benefit from this technology.

"We are very pleased with our return on investment, and we believe that Sun Microsystems has the expertise and technology to help us increase our billing capacity," said Mike Sugg, customer financial system manager, EarthLink. "We needed a highly scalable and reliable environment, top-quality service and superior performance, and the deployment of the Sun Fire 6800 Servers and Sun StorEdge 9960 systems helps our system move faster." [...read more...]

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