Case study 1
- 1. IBM Systems and Technology Group Case Study Baldor consolidates hundreds of servers and cuts IT and energy cost Baldor Electric Company, located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, builds Overview industrial electric motors, mechanical power transmission products, drives and generators. Baldor sells its products worldwide, to distribu- Challenge tors and original equipment manufacturers in more than 70 countries. When Baldor Electric acquired a major competitor, it needed to integrate hun- The company operates from 50 sales offices and warehouses in North dreds of servers into its existing infra- America, and 26 offices serving international markets. The company structure, while maintaining extremely also runs 26 manufacturing sites in the U.S., Canada, England, Mexico high availability for ordering systems. and China. Solution Baldor consolidated to SAP Business In 2007, Baldor acquired Reliance Dodge, one of its major competi- Suite applications, hosted on 70 virtual tors. In the process, it also acquired approximately 200 stand-alone machines running Linux on an IBM z10 Enterprise Class server, and migrated servers of many different types, running various operating systems and data to the IBM System Storage applications. DS8100 platform. The increase in server numbers and system complexity threatened to Benefits ● Eliminated hundreds of servers increase IT costs considerably. Baldor aims at continual reduction in ● Cut energy costs by more than IT costs as a proportion of sales revenue, so the new acquisition 60 percent sparked a review of the hardware and software landscape. Baldor ● Cut IT costs by 50 percent as a pro- wanted to integrate the two organizations as rapidly and cost- portion of sales effectively as possible. Mark Shackelford, VP - Information Services, explains: “We found ourselves running a wide mix of solutions, from IBM System z® through high-end UNIX® boxes to Intel® processor-based systems. Availability is a key issue for Baldor, and during our regular recovery tests we discovered that the complexity of the infrastructure was mak- ing it very difficult to maintain the levels of service our users require.”
- 2. IBM Systems and Technology Group Case Study “In the same review, we noticed that our System z platform had never suffered a hardware outage. Our Linux® environments, both on “We have freed up System z and on other servers, were similarly robust from an operating an area of about system perspective. We were already running Baldor’s SAP applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on System z, and chose to make this 3,000 sq. ft., which is our preferred combination for all mission-critical services.” now office space. This has also dramatically Consolidating on SAP, Linux, and System z Having selected the IBM System z and SAP route, the Baldor IT team reduced the power and set about the migration and consolidation process. cooling requirements of our infrastructure— Baldor runs its core SAP landscape on an IBM System z10™ Enterprise Class. Its IBM DB2® databases run in IBM z/OS® parti- cutting electricity costs tions, while 70 z/VM® partitions provide Linux environments that act by 60 percent.” as SAP application servers. The company uses six Central Processors for general-purpose workload, as well as three z Integrated Information —Mark Shackelford, VP - Information Processors (zIIPs) and 16 Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) Services processors. “One of the great things about System z is the ability to reduce costs by deploying specialty engines,” comments Mark Shackelford. “We run about 40 percent of our DB2 workload on zIIPs, which brings the licensing cost down by about 95 percent compared to an Intel or UNIX infrastructure. All of our Linux environments run on IFLs, which again deliver a very considerable cost saving.” Piece by piece, Baldor is transferring business systems and processes from the Reliance Dodge servers to the z10 EC. When the migration is complete, the former servers are decommissioned and removed from the data center. “This consolidation exercise has basically reduced the size of our data center by 50 percent,” says Mark Shackelford. “We have freed up an area of about 3,000 sq. ft., which is now office space. This has also dramatically reduced the power and cooling requirements of our infrastructure—cutting electricity costs by 60 percent.” High-performance, low-cost storage Baldor has also rationalized and consolidated its storage infrastructure, moving all data onto two IBM System Storage™ DS8100 disk systems. The two DS8100s hold 30 TB, of which 4 TB is production data. “The production environment alone accounts for 2 TB of storage, so it was important to us to find a cost-effective storage platform that would still provide the high performance that the SAP environment requires,” comments Mark Shackelford. “The DS8100 meets all these needs, and also provides features like FlashCopy®, which makes it possible to complete full off-site backups and perform disaster recovery tests very rapidly.”
- 3. IBM Systems and Technology Group Case Study To reduce storage costs further, IBM DB2 for z/OS enables hardware Solution Components data compression, which has reduced the total data volume by an average of 50 percent. Hardware ● IBM System z10™ Enterprise Class “Some of the larger tables in the 100 - 200 GB range have been ● IBM System Storage™ DS8100 reduced by up to 90 percent,” adds Mark Shackelford. “And the great Software thing is that the compression doesn’t impact performance—in fact, it ● IBM DB2® actually improves it.” ● IBM z/OS® ● IBM z/VM® ● SAP Business Suite Getting the best out of SAP Business Suite ● SUSE Linux® Enterprise Server The new infrastructure delivers response times of less than 500 ms in the SAP application environment, enabling the company’s 4,300 SAP users to access real-time business data in SAP BusinessObjects instead of waiting for batch reporting processes. Across the business, from finance to manufacturing to sales, users can rapidly gain the business insight they need to make better, faster, more accurate decisions. The migration to SAP on System z is already complete for Baldor’s U.S. operations and those in Germany, China, Mexico and Canada—it only remains for Baldor to consolidate 10 of its plants to SAP. “We have still got some way to go with the project, but the System z platform gives us all the capacity we’re likely to need for the next three or four years,” concludes Mark Shackelford. “Upgrading to System z10 engines has given us such an increase in performance over the previous generation that we can run all the new systems on the same number of processors and still have plenty of headroom to spare. Thanks to the System z10 solution, we have been able to absorb the Reliance Dodge infrastructure while still reducing our overall IT costs as a proportion of sales revenue by 50 percent. We have also maintained our record of ultra-high availability, with no hardware outages for more than 10 years now.”
- 4. For more information Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Visit us at: ibm.com For more information about Baldor Electric visit: baldor.com © Copyright IBM Corporation 2010 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America February 2010 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and System z are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other product, company or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. References in this publication to IBM products, programs or services do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries in which IBM operates. Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice. All client examples cited represent how some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS-IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. Please Recycle ZSC03072-USEN-00