In an article recently posted on the ServerWatch website entitled “Server Snapshots: Fujitsu in the Real World”, author Drew Robb discusses how Fujitsu servers are used to consolidate the data centers of one of the nation’s leading diversified providers of business information and related products and services. According to the article, “First American Real Estate Solutions (FARES) is using Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER servers to consolidate multiple data centers into two main facilities. In addition to simplifying IT management and improving overall disaster recovery (DR) capabilities, the consolidation has resulted in long-term cost savings and streamlined compliance processes.” 

The article continues: “Fujitsu plays a key role in providing the reliability and scalability that our mission-critical business units require,” says Evan Jafa, CTO of the First American Corporation, the parent of FARES. “Serving our financial services customers, who are concerned with compliance, security and cost savings, was among the primary drivers for consolidating our many data centers into two central data centers with a single, consistent infrastructure.” 

To read the entire article about how PRIMEPOWER and the TRIOLE strategy contribute to the company’s success, go to the ServerWatch link. 

In the special “Innovative Manufacturing and Engineering” issue of the Fujitsu Scientific & Technical Journal (FSTJ), one of the white papers discusses in detail the cooling technologies developed for Fujitsu high-end servers. The paper describes the cooling methods at several different levels: server cabinet level, system board level, and CPU package level. In the paper, author Jie Wei describes “the thermal design and development methodology of Fujitsu’s high-performance server PW2500”. 

Mr. Wei also details “cooling technologies and challenges in dealing with high-performance microprocessors having a high-density and asymmetric power dissipation. With the trend towards miniaturization, high performance, and high-density packaging, there will be continuing challenges in developing high-performance, high-efficiency thermal solutions. The industry faces a critical need to enhance conventional cooling technologies and develop more aggressive and cost-effective cooling technologies.” 

To read the entire text of this fascinating article, go to the FSTJ website and select “15. Thermal Management of Fujitsu’s High-Performance Servers”. While you’re visiting the website, be sure to read any of the other articles that may pique your interest. 

By integrating the new PRIMERGY® BX600 Advanced Blade EcoSystem and our IT infrastructure solutions Fujitsu paves the way to a dynamic data center. A broad range of application areas, from Web and mail servers via terminal server farms up to large and high performance database and application server configurations are optimal fields for the Advanced Blade EcoSystem solution.
The PRIMERGY BX600 delivers several benefits to ensure a more efficient, cost-effective operation:

• Efficiency enhancement resulting from complexity reduction and cost savings through infrastructure consolidation and integration.
• Maximum investment protection is guaranteed due to the design continuity of our Advance Blade Ecosystem, ensuring long-term usability of newly developed components within the future-oriented BX600 chassis.
• Agility improvements due to faster reaction to administrative needs resulting from comprehensive system management, simplified usability with the PRIMERGY ServerView suite, and easy integration into third party Enterprise Management Systems.
• Business continuity due to three main characteristics of the PRIMERGY BX600: the design for highest reliability, an Automated Service Level Management through dynamic load handling with our Adaptive Services Control Center (ASCC), and the opportunity to leverage the large Eco System by use of proven solutions and partners.
  Whether it’s FlexFrame™ for mySAP™ or FlexFrame™ for Oracle, PRIMERGY BX600 is available in these solutions together with our recommended portfolio of professional service offerings to provide you with the best custom-tailored environment. To read more about the PRIMERGY BX600 Advanced Blade EcoSystem, and to watch a 3D animated demo of the new system, go to this link.

On January 7^th, Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation announced that its PRIMERGY® industry-standard x86 servers have been positioned in several Leaders Quadrants of recently published Gartner Magic Quadrant server reports. The Fujitsu PRIMERGY rack, tower and blade servers continue to make gains in the Application, Web, High Performance Computing (HPC) and Infrastructure server categories. The PRIMERGY servers offer industry-leading design and performance and are well-positioned for the growing Windows and Linux-based application markets. 

According to Gartner, “Leaders” are vendors who are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction, and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market. “We believe our position in the Leaders quadrants of these Gartner Magic Quadrant server reports is a direct reflection of the excellent overall design and reliability of our PRIMERGY servers,” said Richard McCormack, senior vice president of marketing at Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation. “Our customers continue to confirm that the PRIMERGY server line offers excellent performance for the dollar, and the dedicated attention of Fujitsu Customer Service results in outstanding value and lower total cost of ownership playing a key role in the Fujitsu TRIOLE^® strategy to optimize the IT infrastructure.” 

If you are interested in reading about the complete line of PRIMERGY tower, rack, and blade servers, be sure to visit the PRIMERGY web pages here. 

At the recent Gartner Data Center Conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada, attendees were presented with a success story from US Airways. Todd Christy, Managing Director of Infrastructure and Security at US Airways not only faced migrating legacy applications to an open systems platform, he also faced the daunting challenge of merging two airline infrastructures into one seamless operation. As if that wasn’t enough, he needed to optimize IT resources and vendor relationships in order to maintain business continuity, reduce TCO and improve operational efficiency.
In order to accomplish these goals, US Airways partnered with Fujitsu to provide PRIMEPOWER (Fujitsu Solaris-based servers) and multi-vendor maintenance services. The Fujitsu engineering team, in collaboration with the US Airways IT team, provided services for all mid-range and IBM mainframe servers, conducted performance and reliability checks, and managed the migration of legacy platforms.
The result? Increased capacity, reliability and performance that resulted in fewer delays, significant savings, and faster resolution of issues with zero operational impact.
If you’re interested in learning some of the history behind the Fujitsu-US Airways collaboration (when US Airways was still America West), go to this link.

In a November 20 InfoWorld cover story, “Simplify the workplace with IT datacenter consolidation”, Leon Erlanger highlighted the consolidation strategy of Fujitsu customer First American, a leading financial information provider.
According to the article, high availability was the key consideration for First American. “As the company became a major information provider, we knew we had to provide super reliability in a very modern datacenter,” says First American CTO Evan Jafa. First American has so far consolidated 25 locations to two datacenters, which it built from scratch to provide high-density power and cooling. Jafa is quoted as saying that getting help from vendors is a key ingredient to consolidation success. Jafa says, “We got a lot of help and used a lot of best practices from our primary partners Fujitsu, HP, and IBM.”
To read the entire InfoWorld article on this important subject, go to the article here.

The PRIMEQUEST server product line was recently upgraded to dual-core Itanium 2 9000 series “Montecito” processors. Benchmark publications for SPEC CPU2000 and SAP SD 2-Tier have so far shown impressive performance improvements. 

The PRIMEQUEST system now excels in the most demanding TPC-C benchmark. The PRIMEQUEST 540 with Oracle 10g database and Red Hat Enterprise Linux signify an important list of achievements: 

• Intel, Itanium and Linux world records  

• Best-in-class among Itanium vendors in performance per core 

• The 16-socket 32-core PRIMEQUEST 540 outperforms the 64-core HP Integrity Superdome based on single-core Itanium 9M  

• 65% better than Unisys ES7000/One with 16 dual-core Xeon x7000 processors at 749,839 tpmC  

• Linux is shown to be Enterprise Ready again with this complex 3-Tier data center benchmark  

• IBM advantage is no longer in the mythical “factor of 2 and higher” as claimed for Oracle environment  

To view the benchmark certificates, go to the following links: 

PRIMEQUEST 540 TPC-C Benchmark Certificate: 

http://www.tpc.org/results/individual_results/Fujitsu/fujitsu_primequest540_16p32c_tpcc_es.pdf 

TPC-C Benchmark Ranking 

http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_perf_results.asp 

A recently-released white paper discusses the PRIMEQUEST Series 500 mission-critical enterprise servers based on the Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processor. The servers are available in three models: the 520 (8 CPUs/16 cores), the 540 (16 CPUs/32 cores), and the 580 (32 CPUs/64 cores). All PRIMEQUEST servers run the current versions of Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 4 [RHEL4] and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Version 9 [SLES9]) and Windows (Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition for Itanium and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition for Itanium). They will also run the next available Linux versions (RHEL5 and SLES10) and Microsoft’s Vista once those operating systems are released. In addition, the Series 500 servers will be able to accommodate the Itanium Montvale microprocessor upon its availability. Described by Fujitsu as its mission-critical line of Intel Architecture servers, these high-end platforms target customers seeking a highly reliable enterprise-class server that benefits from the economies of industry-standard hardware and software. 
What differentiates Fujitsu’s PRIMEQUEST servers from other Intel IPF-based platforms is the careful attention paid to mission-critical design. Fujitsu has leveraged its proven mainframe and PRIMEPOWER (for Solaris and SPARC) design experience to create an Itanium-based family that satisfies customer desires for running mission-critical workloads on industry-standard servers.
It is well accepted in the industry that firms with a mainframe heritage such as Fujitsu, IBM, and Unisys can leverage this experience to other machine types for great benefit. Fujitsu is outstanding in this regard and has incorporated a number of mainframe-like capabilities for high availability in its PRIMEQUEST server offerings. These capabilities include the industry-unique System Mirror architecture, redundant system management, multiple hot-plug facilities, clustering, and a variety of other features and functions.
To read the complete white paper, click here.