Servers, Storage and Software blog

The Challenge of Innovation
posted: 28 April 2010 by Tom Hughes
 

The Importance of Infrastructure Design Early in ERP Implementations
posted: 15 December 2009 by Tom Hughes
 

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For more information about our Hardware & Software Solutions, please contact:

Robin Caputo
VP, Marketing

CIBER is an authorized Unisys Business Development Partner and Value-Added Reseller. This relationship allows CIBER to be a "one stop shop" for companies that have a need to invest in innovative technologies for increasing business agility, and transforming data centers. CIBER is also positioned to actively serve as a consulting advisor to enterprises that have, or are planning, initiatives that further their strategic business objectives through deployment of next-generation x64-based enterprise computing frameworks. Our solution architects and strategic practice¹ consultants focus on providing the optimal foundation upon which to build large and complex business solutions powered by Unisys systems and technologies.

Scenario 1 - High Availability Platform Solution Framework

Unisys ClearPath 4000 Series Enterprise Servers — the Dorado 4000 for Unisys OS2200 operating environments and the Libra 4000 for Unisys MCP operating environments — deliver the performance and availability demanded by mainframe class, business-critical application workloads.

Unisys ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Servers for mission-critical performance, scalability, and availability in x64 standards-based WinTel and LinTel environments (Microsoft Windows Server Datacenter and Enterprise Editions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux).

Unisys uAdapt software solution for server failover, high availability, disaster recovery and capacity automation. uAdapt lets IT organizations dispense with most “standby” servers while still protecting all of their systems, by enabling N-to-1 failover – or by enabling “standby” servers to be repurposed for other non-production systems, even as they remain available for high availability failover or disaster recovery usage. Effectively, uAdapt enables you to create an enterprise compute cloud, of any size, internal to your company, by racking servers once, cabling servers once, and re-using servers repeatedly.

Scenario 2 - Database and OLTP Platform Solution Framework

Unisys ES7000 Model 7600R server's scalability and balanced architecture make an ideal solution for transaction-intensive OLTP and complex database workloads. The ability to spread the workload across a maximum of 16 processor sockets and 96 processor cores provides ultimate database performance. The Model 7600R set records for both price/performance and performance for 8-socket systems as well as price/performance for 16 socket systems in the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) TPC-E benchmark. The focus of the benchmark is the central database that executes transactions related to an organizations customer accounts. The database schema, data population, transactions, and implementation rules have been designed to be broadly representative of modern OLTP systems.

Scenario 3 - Decision Support and Business Intelligence Platform Solution Framework

By leveraging Unisys' rich heritage in mainframe class systems, the monster-sized configurability of the Unisys ES7000 Model 7600R server makes an ideal solution for workloads which examine large volumes of data, execute complex queries, and return answers to business critical questions. The Model 7600R set a record for best price/performance against a database of 10,000GB in the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) TPC-H benchmark. The TCP-H results also vaulted the 7600R into other leadership positions: Best and only performance at 10,000GB yet recorded for a server based on the Intel Xeon processor; Best performance at 10,000GB by a server using a Microsoft SQL Server database; and Best performance at 10,000GB by a server in a WinTel environment.

Scenario 4 - Consolidation and Virtualization Platform Solution Framework

Unisys ES7000 Model 7600R server provides the monster-sized reliability, availability and scalability necessary to consolidate multiple mission-critical servers onto one system with confidence. Each Model 7600R can scale from one node (4 sockets/16 Intel Xeon cores) to four nodes (16 sockets/96 Intel Xeon cores) and up to 1TB memory. The Model 7600R server is designed to support the Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX server virtualization software.

The innovative Unisys ES7000 Model 7405R server is a scalable virtualization powerhouse. Packing a huge memory footprint and powered by Quad-Core AMD processors, this server can drive the most demanding virtualization workloads. With up to 8 sockets/32 cores in a streamlined 4U form factor, the Model 7405R server delivers best-in-class performance density. In addition to supporting the wide range of operating systems as the Model 7600R server, the Model 7405R server also provides support for Sun Solaris 10 on x64.

Unisys uAdapt software enables IT organizations to create a mixed physical and virtual enterprise compute cloud, of any size, internal to the organization. uAdapt functions as the "pre-boot" environment for hypervisors, taking physical machines from a "dead bare metal" powered off state to installed, operating, connected VMware ESX or Xen, dramatically extending their functionality to work better in an existing, unmodified data center architecture. With uAdapt, moving existing bare-metal software stacks in and out of virtual machines also becomes a straightforward, 5-minute exercise.

Scenario 5 - Continuous Data Protection and Recovery Solution

The Unisys SafeGuard 30m solution provides services and technology to significantly reduce the financial risks associated with unexpected downtime by delivering 30-minute (30m) or less recovery time over unlimited distances, providing a remarkably stable environment for mission-critical, Intel based business applications. Now, for the first time, the Unisys SafeGuard 30m solution allows Microsoft clustered applications to automatically failover to a secondary site at an unlimited distance from the primary site. This enables organizations to use their facilities anywhere in the world as backup sites. The SafeGuard 30m solution includes all the hardware, software and services needed to get a business continuance solution deployed quickly and cost effectively.

The Unisys RTS4200 is a full-featured storage system that combines enterprise-level data services such as Fibre Channel disk drives for primary storage, SATA disk drives for secondary storage, storage virtualization, snapshot, mirroring, asynchronous remote replication, storage provisioning, and automated capacity growth. The RTS4200 is a robust and scalable long distance solution for IT organizations seeking a self-contained, homogeneous business continuity, disaster recovery, and data protection solution for their Microsoft Windows Server and Linux platforms.

Scenario 6 - Application Development Platform Solution

The Unisys BIS² software and CIBER's rapid application development studio (RADS) combine to create a solution suite consisting of application design and construction tools and supporting methodologies. The BIS|RADS suite dramatically improves a developer's time-to-solution cycle and reduces development costs because it enables the developer to quickly design, build, test, and deploy easy-to-use GUI and Web based transaction-intensive, enterprise-class information management and reporting systems. The suite is supported on 32- and 64-bit Microsoft Windows Server, SUSE Linux, and Red Hat Linux platforms; 32-bit Sun Solaris; and Unisys OS2200-based ClearPath mainframes.

¹Strategic consulting practices consist of: IT Strategy (IT consulting, planning, portfolio rationalization, consolidation and virtualization); Architecture (enterprise architecture, SOA, EAI and Web services); Enterprise Resource Planning (SAP, Oracle E-Business, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle JD Edwards, Lawson and Microsoft Dynamics solutions); Information Management (business intelligence, data warehousing, data governance and ETL); Agile (methodology, frameworks and coaching for application development and deployments); and Security (application risk management, 3rd-party risk management, compliance management, assessment/testing, plus industry-specific regulatory risk and compliance)

²BIS - Business Information Server (formerly known as "MAPPER"). BIS is an application development language and database management system created and maintained by the Unisys Corporation. The language is typically classified as a fourth-generation programming language. BIS helps programmers to develop applications, optionally using its own tightly integrated database and programming tools. BIS-powered applications are portable across most modern computing systems and allow access to various popular data sources without having to learn the underlying data access methods.