Carrying on the traditions of Synergon Informatika Nyrt., Synergon System Integrator (SRI) has been selling, supporting and servicing SUN and HP servers, external storage devices and back-up systems. Our company has partner certification of both manufacturers (Sun Associate Partner, HP Preferred Partner). Owing to that, we maintain excellent relations with the Hungarian representative offices of every manufacturer, and enjoy maximum support from them.  Our professionals are highly trained and have huge experiences in the operation of these products.

SERVER CONSOLIDATION WITH BLADE SERVERS

Server consolidation is an element of IT consolidation, in which we replace a high number of servers of various types and manufacturers, with restricted performance, by a few powerful, reliable, well-scaleable and easily manageable servers.

There is a logical and a physical aspect to server consolidation. 

The logical aspect is that we consolidate the servers in order to ensure more economical utilization of resources, more efficient operation, simpler and cheaper manageability. 

In most cases server consolidation also involves consolidation of the applied platforms (operating systems), which further simplifies the management of the IT system.

It is the physical consequence of server consolidation that we replace a high number of servers with a smaller number of blade servers, typically suitable to be installed in rack cabinets and having a shared console, thus we significantly reduce the footprint of the servers, as well as their needs for power supply and cooling.

A blade is a server with modular set-up, which typically consists of one motherboard, basically contains a processor, memory and some kind of connection, and lacks several components, such as power supply unit, active cooling, Ethernet or FC connections, or even storage devices, these are provided by the enclosure.  As a result, a blade is a very thin device, as many as 10 to 16 such servers can be inserted in one enclosure. 

The physical element of the consolidation of the server park is ensured by the blade, while the logical part is provided by virtualization software (e.g. VMware), quasi complementing each other. Accordingly, in the upcoming years we expect an increase in the application of virtualization, in parallel with the blade servers, since the traditionally conservative corporate IT departments have increasing trust in this technology.

The fundamental component of the product is the new server hardware, by which we replace the old servers, and the software ensuring the virtualization layer. 

As is implied by what we have written above, server consolidation is only one step in the line of consolidation. It can be basically justified by application consolidation or operating system platform consolidation 

In addition, it may typically trigger background storage device consolidation and back-up system construction.

 

HIGH RELIABILITY SYSTEMS  

The comprehensive term of “high reliability systems” means those hardware infrastructure elements and architectural solutions that contribute to the increase of the reliability of the IT system, its tolerance for faults and disasters. 

There are several levels of reliability, these can be accomplished by various solutions, at various cost levels. 

There are base level, reliability enhancing solutions built in the individual servers as well, but this product of Synergon goes beyond individual solutions and mainly applies to systems aimed at 7x24 hours operation. 

The possibility of breakdown of individual servers can be reduced, but the only way to eliminate this threat completely is to apply a second server. High availability systems consisting of several servers are called clusters.  It is a feature of cluster systems that several machines are running an application in cooperation, and if any of the machines breaks down, the remaining machine(s) are able to continue running the cluster without interruption. 

Cluster solutions exist in Microsoft and Unix environments.  However, systems operating by real performance balancing run in Unix environment.  Of these Synergon recommends SunCluster solutions. 

The essential condition for the operation of cluster systems is a shared external storage system, to which every cluster node can be connected. When the storage system is designed, special attention must be paid to operating security and data security, therefore wherever possible, redundant solutions should be applied. 

The design of the cluster system may also justify storage consolidation in many cases.

Naturally, a reliable back-up system is essential for the assurance of high availability. 

But even if all these facilities are available, there is still a minimum likelihood of a system halt.  For this case Synergon offers an enhanced level of availability contract for the high reliability systems.

In the case of high reliability system we basically have a very important benefit argument, and that is reliability.  The essence of this is that if mission-critical systems are running on high reliability systems, the number and duration of halts, and thus downtime will decrease significantly. Accordingly, a company applying such systems will avoid significant - monetary and non-monetary - losses.

 

WHY SYNERGON SYSTEM INTEGRATOR?

Focusing on the solutions presented above, we are convinced that Synergon System Integrator (SRI) is capable of the design and installation of the hardware infrastructure necessary for the implementation of any IT system.

 

 

MAJOR REFERENCES FOR SYNERGON GROUP 

We have several references for the design of hardware infrastructure in every commercial sector.

·         Technical and Economic University of Budapest

Provision of the hardware elements of the new infrastructure serving the Economic System of the Technical University  (MGR), by the application of high reliability storage systems.

·         Budapest, Local Government of District XVI

Consolidation of the existing, heterogeneous server park with HP servers, to a uniform hardware infrastructure of high availability.