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Thomas
Technology Solutions, Inc.
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Optimizing
A Legacy System While Providing Failsafe Measures For Applications
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Client
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Thomas
Technology Solutions, Inc. is a premier provider of information management
and electronic publishing solutions and services. The company is a
subsidiary of London-based Thomas Publishing, the leading provider
of industrial product and service information through both print and
electronic media. |
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Challenges
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Thomas's business critical production software application needed
a cost-effective failsafe solution in place to make sure that it would
be accessible to users immediately and efficiently. Should the application
go down, it would be costly to Thomas financially, and would damage
their credibility in the eyes of their clients. |
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Work within the confines of legacy equipment. Thomas had two Sun Enterprise
250 (E250) servers at their disposal, one of which already housed
the production software application. |
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Strategies
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Implement
a "cold-standby/fail-over" solution for the application running
on the Sun E250 server, enabling it to be switched over to the second
Sun E250 server in the case of failure.
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Sengen
also needed to educate and prepare Thomas system administrators
to operate the solution after the end of the engagement.
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Solutions
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Configured
the second Sun E250 server with an identical hardware and software
configuration to function as a cold-standby server.
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Installed
host information from the first server onto the second server using
a Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM), provided by Sun.
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Documented
technical specifications and operational procedures throughout the
engagement.
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Created
detailed documentation and trained the client staff on procedures
for switching to the cold-standby server in case of failure. Sengen
also educated and trained the Thomas staff on the need for, and
process of, creating the backups required to ensure that no information
was lost during the switch to the cold-standby.
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Results
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Sengen's
solution cut the potential down time of the server from more than
a day to less than half an hour.
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Provided
procedure documents and training for switching between the primary
and backup servers so that Thomas personnel could monitor and fix
any problems after the end of the engagement.
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