Project MegaGrid Delivers Resource Provisioning and Performance Monitoring Best Practices for Enterprise Grid Computing Environments

isco Systems Joins Dell, EMC, Intel, and Oracle in Project MegaGrid to Build Tested and Validated Approach to Enterprise Grid Computing

ORACLE(R) OPENWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19 -- Project MegaGrid, launched in December 2004 by Dell Inc., EMC Corporation, Intel Corporation, and Oracle, today announced that Phase II of the multi-year initiative has produced dynamic provisioning best practices to manage heavy workloads in a grid computing environment. The four sponsors have combined certain core technologies and technical resources to ease the burden of integration for their customers, and to develop a complete enterprise grid computing solution that outperforms traditional SMP offerings at a fraction of the cost.

Project MegaGrid also announced today that Cisco Systems, Inc. has joined the initiative to lend its considerable networking expertise and technical resources to the practice of building enterprise grid computing environments.

While Phase I of the initiative focused on the scalability and performance of a comprehensive database, server and networked storage configuration to support a single application, Phase II focused on dynamic provisioning, the seamless extension, allocation or re-purposing of server and disk resources across mid-tier, database, and storage tiers to support an increased workload. Project MegaGrid's infrastructure, hosted at Oracle's Global IT Data Center, was successfully scaled to 66 nodes on Dell(TM) PowerEdge(TM) servers with Intel(R) Xeon(TM) processors while running multiple applications with various workloads, databases and storage systems. The applications included:

-- Cramer Enterprise Inventory Management Platform for telecommunication service providers running a mix of transactions;
-- Oracle(R) Daily Business Intelligence, the embedded management reporting system of the Oracle E-Business Suite, running hundreds of management reports on a daily basis;
-- Oracle E-Business Suite modules such as Oracle Financials, Oracle Human Resources Management, and Oracle Supply Chain Management, among others, running a mix of transactions;
-- Oracle Internet Directory requiring high availability and rapid response time for identity and authorization management across the applications; and,
-- Oracle Ultra Search featuring a workload characterized by short queries requiring a large cache and by batch transactions when rebuilding the indices.

Server and disk resources for the various applications and databases were dynamically provisioned to ensure that defined application service level agreements (SLAs) were continuously met. Provisioning, monitoring and management of the Project MegaGrid environment -- including all applications and systems -- was achieved by Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control (Oracle Grid Control). The dynamic provisioning of application server, database, server and storage resources enables enterprises running grid computing environments to feature a more flexible and scalable infrastructure. This delivers better application performance to meet expected service levels, enables resource utilization monitoring end-to-end -- resulting in higher resource utilization.

"Project MegaGrid has made significant headway in establishing best practices and guidelines for scaling and provisioning an enterprise grid computing infrastructure built on standards-based products," said Oracle Vice President of Server Technologies, Angelo Pruscino. "We've delivered end-to-end testing, validation, and documentation of the critical components and processes for the successful deployment, management and monitoring of grid computing environments running real-world workloads. Organizations can deploy their mission critical applications on large-scale, highly responsive grids that will adapt and scale to meet their business needs."

Cisco Joins Project MegaGrid

Cisco is joining Project MegaGrid as a member focused on optimizing the network for clustering and grid scalability in the data center. In particular, Cisco will play a key role in establishing the best practices around network design, performance optimization and management for large enterprise grid computing environments. In Phase III, the Project MegaGrid infrastructure will be scaled to 128 nodes with an emphasis on business continuity and end-to-end automation and management. Datacenter networking products from Cisco will continue to be utilized, including the industry leading Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series of Ethernet switches, the new InfiniBand switches for high density server connectivity and the Cisco MDS 9000 Family switches for high performance SAN connectivity which offer the highest levels of availability, integrated security, and support for converged applications and superior operational efficiency.

"We're pleased to join with other Project MegaGrid members in this effort to help enable customers to more easily benefit from the advantages of grid computing, including enhanced resource sharing, high availability of services, reduced costs and greatly improved application performance," said Cisco Senior Vice President of Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group, Jayshree Ullal.

Cox Communications Infrastructure Powered by Project MegaGrid Sponsors Cox Communications, the third largest cable provider in the nation with more than 6.7 million customers, relies on products and support from Cisco, Dell, EMC, Intel and Oracle for its current IT infrastructure, and is assessing the best practices resulting from Project MegaGrid. "Cisco, Dell, EMC, Intel and Oracle have played a key role in the development of our information infrastructure," said Cox Communications Vice President of IT Operations, Tom Guthrie. "We're constantly challenged to expand our value- added services while delivering high quality service to our growing base of subscribers. Working with these companies, Cox Communications has developed a flexible IT infrastructure that can scale to meet the changing needs of our business. And we'll explore with them how we can take advantage of enterprise grids to improve our application service levels, to better manage our systems, and to help reduce the cost of our IT systems. "

Project MegaGrid Demonstrated at Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco

Project MegaGrid is being demonstrated this week at Oracle OpenWorld at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Technical demonstrations and presentations are available at the following sponsor booths in the exhibition hall:

-- Dell -- located in booth 1202 will feature presentations highlighting results from Phase II of Project MegaGrid;
-- EMC -- located in booth 1002, EMC will review the findings of the three new joint Project MegaGrid white papers outlining customers design, implementation and operational best practices;
-- Intel -- located in booth 1212, Intel will feature ongoing presentations on Phase II results and details of the Project MegaGrid configuration; and,
-- Oracle -- will offer virtual "tours" of Project MegaGrid using Oracle Grid Control in the Oracle DEMOgrounds in Pods A3 and A4. Additionally, two technical presentations on Project MegaGrid will be delivered at Oracle OpenWorld on:
-- S1950, Monday, September 19 at 11am Pacific, Room 305 -- Project MegaGrid: Tools and Techniques for Performance Monitoring and Resource Provisioning; and,
-- S1951, Wednesday, September 21 at 4:30pm Pacific, Room 305 -- Project MegaGrid Technical Panel Q&A: Best Practices for Deploying Large Clusters.

Cramer will feature demos and the results from Project MegaGrid during the Communications Industry Sessions at OpenWorld, on Monday September 19, 11am - 5pm at the Cramer kiosk located outside Room 2002, Moscone West, 2nd Level. Phase II of Project MegaGrid is documented in a series of three white papers covering the following topics:

-- "Project MegaGrid: Infrastructure Design;"
-- "Project MegaGrid: Tools and Techniques for Performance Monitoring and Resource Provisioning;" and,
-- "Project MegaGrid: Storage Assisted Data Migration."

For more information about Project MegaGrid and access to the Phase II white papers, go to:

-- http://www.dell.com/megagrid
-- http://www.emc.com/megagrid
-- http://www.intel.com/go/megagrid
-- http://www.oracle.com/megagrid

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, celebrates 20 years of commitment to technology innovation, industry leadership, and corporate social responsibility. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com . For ongoing news, go to http://newsroom.cisco.com .

About Dell

Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL) is a trusted and diversified information-technology supplier and partner, and sells a comprehensive portfolio of products and services directly to customers worldwide. Dell, recognized by Fortune magazine as America's most admired company and No. 3 globally, designs, builds and delivers innovative, tailored systems that provide customers with exceptional value. Company revenue for the last four quarters was $52.8 billion. For more information about Dell and its products and services, visit http://www.dell.com .

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information storage and management that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at http://www.emc.com/ .

About Intel

Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom .

About Oracle

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com/ .