dell enterprise technology center series
Implementation Study:
Dell IT Scales Supply
Chain Management
with Oracle RAC 10g
By Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.
Todd Muirhead
Tiong Tey
Raveendra Avutu
T
Related Categories:
Database
When the expensive proprietary servers running the Dell supply
chain management systems had reached their limits, the Dell
IT group migrated to cost-effective, standards-based Dell ™
PowerEdge™ servers running Oracle® Real Application Clusters 10g.
This architecture helped enhance database performance while
providing scalability for future growth.
he Dell supply chain management (SCM) database
implemented this type of system for Dell operations at mul-
systems handle key business functions that support
tiple locations around the world. Using the same processes
worldwide manufacturing operations, including the
for disaster recovery, backup, and monitoring across all
efficient Dell inventory management model and fast, direct
Dell operations enables Dell IT to take advantage of a cost-
delivery of computers, accessories, parts, and supplies. These
effective and readily supported deployment model. This
systems must be designed for reliability and cost-effective scal-
article describes how Dell IT migrated its critical SCM appli-
ability: a failure can cost thousands of dollars per minute in
cations from proprietary UNIX-based servers to industry-
factory downtime, and the SCM systems must be able to
standard Dell hardware.
handle increasing workloads as the company grows.
When Dell was a smaller company than it is now, before
Dell supply chain management
Dell Enterprise
Technology Center
the development of powerful, industry-standard servers of
The Dell SCM system must handle an enormous number of
Implementation study
the type that Dell manufactures, the Dell IT group ran its SCM
transactions and pieces of information, and includes multi-
database applications on large, expensive, proprietary serv-
ple core components necessary to keep operations running
ers based on the UNIX® OS. However, as the company grew,
smoothly:
Oracle
Scalable enterprise
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for the complete category index.
50
servers lacking the necessary capacity had to be replaced
with even larger, more powerful servers. And because the
• Configuration management: The configuration manage-
servers were not redundant, updating a single server often
ment component manages over 1 million Dell part num-
required shutting down entire systems.
bers per year across approximately 200 product families,
The increased performance of industry-standard Dell
and over 2 million bills of materials (BOMs) per year.
PowerEdge servers, however, has enabled Dell IT to create
BOMs listing component part numbers are created for
cost-effective, highly scalable systems using Oracle Real
manufacturing facilities to build assemblies and sub­
Application Clusters (RAC) 10g. By sharing a large database
assemblies for Dell products.
across multiple PowerEdge servers, Dell IT can easily deploy
• Procurement: The procurement component manages nearly
additional low-cost servers when necessary to handle
1.8 million purchase order lines per year from more than
increased workloads rather than buying additional large,
5,000 suppliers worldwide. To streamline the procurement
expensive, proprietary UNIX-based servers. Dell IT has
process, Dell uses an automated application that includes
DELL POWER SOLUTIONS | May 2007
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
managed the production database on Oracle
Database 8.0.6. The disaster recovery server
Production data center
had 12 processors at 336 MHz and 6 GB of
memory. Arrays running the EMC® Symmetrix®
platform provided disk storage.
To make the system highly available, Dell IT
used Sun Cluster to cluster the primary and secondary servers in an active/passive configuration connected to shared disk storage, enabling
Primary
Sun E����
Secondary
Sun E����
the database to fail over to the passive node if
EMC Symmetrix
the active one failed. The failover was initiated
EMC SRDF
Domain Name System (DNS) alias for failover
Sun Cluster
Disaster recovery data center
when the passive node no longer detected a
heartbeat signal from the active node. The
failover disconnected all users, who would then
have to reconnect to the newly active server.
Current system: Oracle RAC
on Dell PowerEdge servers
By 2005, the performance of the proprietary
Disaster recovery
Sun E����
EMC Symmetrix
system was becoming a concern, with many of
the batch processes taking a long time to
complete—the end-of-quarter batch process
job, for example, could take up to 31 hours. In
addition, the Oracle Database version was out-
Figure 1. Previous Dell supply chain management system based on proprietary UNIX-based servers
dated and unsupported, and because it did not
support Oracle RAC, Dell IT could not add capac-
workflow approvals and vendor communica-
In addition to these order-related transac-
ity by horizontal scaling. To continue using this
tion and enables services such as defective
tions, the SCM system also runs several other
system would have required a large investment
part replacement.
batch process jobs to aggregate data each week,
in upgrading these large, expensive servers.
• Cost: The cost component runs mostly in
month, or quarter.
batch mode to calculate the costs to Dell for
In the North America region, the Oracle
all BOMs. These batch jobs run weekly,
Database application for SCM consists of
monthly, and quarterly, with each job aggre-
approximately 3,000 database objects (func-
gating total material costs.
tions, packages, procedures, triggers, tables,
• Inventory: The inventory component man-
and views). This SCM system is supported by
ages more than 3 million inventory move-
six PowerEdge 2650 application servers, five
ments daily from stock rooms to factory
internally developed Web-based applications,
floors across all Dell sites, along with the
more than 50 system-to-system integrations,
corresponding 3 million messages transmit-
approximately 125 batch jobs, and approxi-
ted to different systems for reporting, analy-
mately 500 user interfaces.
Instead, Dell decided to migrate to a costeffective, industry standards–based platform,
TALK BACK
Tell us how the Dell Enterprise Technology Center can help your organiza-
sis, and factory scheduling.
component handles approximately 15,000
Previous system: Proprietary
UNIX-based servers
items per day, including payments to Dell
The previous Dell SCM system used Sun E6000-
suppliers, invoices, and receipts. Vendor
class UNIX-based servers running the Sun
Send your feedback and ideas to
information includes vendor ID number,
Solaris 8 OS and Sun Cluster 2.2 (see Figure 1).
location, negotiated terms, and contact
The primary and secondary servers, each with
[email protected].
information.
16 processors at 336 MHz and 11 GB of memory,
• Accounts payable: The accounts payable
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
tion better simplify, utilize, and scale
enterprise solutions and platforms.
www.dell.com/powersolutions
51
dell enterprise technology center series
apply them, which allows the database to stay
in sync and helps prevent physical corruptions
from being copied to the disaster recovery data-
Production data center
base. The second cluster uses SRDF to ship
changed blocks at the storage level in real time
Primary Oracle RAC 10g cluster
from the primary site to the disaster recovery
site. This method is fast but does not guard
against data corruption. The combination of
EMC SRDF
Oracle Data Guard redo log shipping
EMC Symmetrix
Disaster recovery data center
Data Guard and SRDF provides both fast and
secure data replication.
Dell IT also uses several other programs to
provide key backup, load balancing, and administration capabilities:
EMC SRDF disaster recovery Oracle RAC 10g cluster
• Oracle Recovery Manager: Dell IT uses this
program to back up the primary database
EMC Symmetrix
and archive logs. Two full (hot) backups are
made to tape weekly through the EMC
NetWorker™ interface; archive logs are
backed up hourly to enable Dell IT to recover
Oracle Data Guard disaster recovery Oracle RAC 10g cluster
the database to a specific point in time if
necessary. Dell IT can also back up the database from the disaster recovery site rather
EMC Symmetrix
than taxing the primary nodes.
• Oracle Database 10g Services: This software
provides load balancing for each cluster—for
example, Dell IT can have three nodes
Figure 2. Current Dell supply chain management system based on Oracle RAC 10g and Dell
PowerEdge servers
handle online users and three nodes handle
batch processing.
• Oracle Grid Control: This software provides
replacing the Sun servers with Oracle RAC 10g
is seamless and transparent to users, users do
monitoring and management capabilities
clusters of Dell PowerEdge 6650 servers, each
not have to reconnect, as they did in the previ-
and helps simplify many day-to-day data-
with four Intel® Xeon® processors (see Figure 2).
ous system.
base administration tasks; it also allows
The environment includes a primary cluster and
One of the disaster recovery clusters uses
administrators to set thresholds for different
two disaster recovery clusters. While the previ-
Oracle Data Guard software, and the other uses
events to create trouble tickets through the
ous system could not scale beyond one physical
EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF®)
problem management system.
server, the current system allows Dell IT to easily
software. The first cluster uses the Data Guard
add servers to the clusters to handle increased
Broker component to ship logs in real time from
Dell IT has implemented these clusters at mul-
workloads. The multi-node Oracle RAC architec-
the primary site to the disaster recovery site and
tiple locations around the world (see Figure 3).
ture can also provide higher I/O throughput
than the previous system because of the
increased number of available interfaces.
The Oracle RAC 10g architecture includes
built-in high-availability features. All Oracle RAC
nodes and instances share the same physical
database; if any of these experience problems,
the users and connections can fail over to the
other nodes or instances. Because this failover
52
DELL POWER SOLUTIONS | May 2007
“Standardizing on cost-effective Oracle RAC 10g
clusters of PowerEdge servers with Dell/EMC storage helped Dell IT deploy the systems globally in
just eight months.”
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
Standardizing on cost-effective Oracle RAC 10g
data extraction for all material movements
SCM systems to provide real-time information
clusters of PowerEdge servers with Dell/EMC stor-
transactions, which dropped from almost
about key business functions. Running these sys-
age, with similar processes for deployment, disas-
5 hours to just 35 minutes for an 88 percent
tems on Oracle RAC 10g clusters of industry-
ter recovery, and backup, helped Dell IT deploy
improvement, while the time for the entire
standard Dell PowerEdge servers enables Dell IT
the systems globally in just eight months.
end-of-quarter jobs processing decreased
to scale them efficiently and cost-effectively to
from 31 hours to 23 hours.
handle increased workloads. By moving the sys-
Performance increases
tems to Dell servers when it did, Dell IT avoided
significant additional expenditures for proprietary
mance for both the previous and current SCM
Cost-effective, scalable supply chain
management
systems. Figure 4 shows the 10 longest end-
Supply chain management is essential to Dell
provided a clear path for future growth.
of-month and end-of-quarter transactions. The
operations around the world, with both factory
most significant time savings occurred in the
operations and internal systems dependent on
Dell engineers measured database perfor-
UNIX-based servers, enhanced performance, and
Dave Jaffe, Ph.D., is a senior consultant on the
Dell Enterprise Technology Center team. He has
a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University and a
Region
Primary site
Disaster recovery site
Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of
North America
Six-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster
Two sets of six-node Oracle RAC 10g clusters
California, San Diego.
China
Three-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster
Three-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster
Brazil
Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster
Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster
Europe
Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster
Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster
Malaysia
Two sets of two-node Oracle RAC 10g clusters
Two sets of two-node Oracle RAC 10g clusters
Todd Muirhead is a senior engineering consultant
on the Dell Enterprise Technology Center team.
Todd has a B.A. in Computer Science from the
University of North Texas and is Microsoft Certified
Systems Engineer + Internet (MCSE+I) certified.
Figure 3. Global deployment of Dell supply chain management systems
Tiong Tey is an IT strategist on the Dell World
Wide Procurement IT team. Tiong has a B.S. and
Transaction
Time on previous
system
(hours:minutes)
Time on current
system
(hours:minutes)
Performance gain
Entire end-of-quarter jobs
processing
31:00
23:00
26%
Cost-per-order calculation
8:52
5:40
36%
Quarterly BOM calculation
7:30
1:56
74%
Entire end-of-month jobs
processing
6:00
4:00
33%
New product material costs
calculation
5:56
2:17
62%
Data summary for all levels
of order details
5:33
1:58
65%
Data extraction for all material
movements transactions
4:49
0:35
88%
Costs roll-up (materials,
royalties, and transportation)
3:18
3:12
3%
Material management transactions creation based on inventory
transactions
3:00
0:43
76%
Financial journal entries creation
2:37
a master’s degree in Computer Science from
Wichita State University.
Raveendra Avutu is an IT manager in the Global
Data Management group supporting databases
for Dell IT. Raveendra has a master’s degree in
Computer Science from Oklahoma State University.
QUICK LINKs
0:40
75%
Figure 4. Performance gains for 10 longest database transactions in Dell supply chain
management systems
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
Dell Enterprise Technology Center:
www.dell.com/techcenter
Dell and Oracle Database 10g:
www.dell.com/oracle10g
Oracle and Dell:
www.dell.com/oracle
www.dell.com/powersolutions
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