HP ProLiant BL460c Special Blade Server 461273-001 Prospecto

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HP provides a vital customer service called Revision and Configuration Manage-
ment (RCM), which collects IT infrastructure configuration, OS and software 
revisions, and patch data that are used to create detailed configuration, change, 
comparison, and analysis reports. Customers can use those reports to identify 
and resolve problems associated with revision incompatibilities or configuration 
rule violations, and to proactively mitigate potential issues in the future. RCM 
can reduce the amount of time it takes to identify and resolve these sorts of 
problems, minimize unscheduled downtime, and improve the speed and  
accuracy of diagnosing system problems.

RCM gathers server configuration data from customers’ servers worldwide, and 
key pieces of information are extracted and stored in an Oracle database to 
deliver business intelligence that actually helps HP and customers make business  
decisions. from that database, a variety of reports are created, including 
standard configuration reports that are stored in a web portal that is available 
to customers. The database can also create change reports that compare how 
servers and server configurations have changed over time.

RCM tracks an estimated 90,000 mission-critical servers worldwide, resulting in  
100,000 server configuration collections being received and processed per month.  
HP is planning to grow RCM to 220,000 collections per month. RCM is considered  
vital for tuning and the proper functioning of many of these customer data 
centers. Because of its importance to customers, HP is continually looking for 
ways to improve the service. HP was using a five-node Linux cluster running Red 
Hat 3 and NfS (Network file System) to run RCM. But HP wanted to enhance or 
replace that infrastructure so the service would be even more reliable, relevant 
and effective. It was looking for a solution that would accomplish the following:

• Increase performance. The legacy solution was sluggish due to NfS.  

Retrieving directory listings, for example, was at times slow, because  
directories monitored for incoming data could have tens of thousands of 
entries that need to be quickly processed. HP was looking for a solution that 
would improve the overall performance of the systems that support RCM.

• Improve stability and availability. The existing solution, under extreme 

loads, was not as stable and available as HP wanted. In addition, when there 
were network issues, the RCM application would at times experience avail-
ability problems. HP wanted to deliver technology that met the new internal 
business requirements associated with the latest SLAs and was always avail-
able. The SLAs called for downtime and incident resolution of four hours, 
and uptime of 99.5% or more.

• Provide capacity on demand. HP needs to be able to easily increase server 

capacity (and performance throughput) and storage capacity without disrup-
tion to address the future growth of the RCM mission and installed base. 

• Offer flexibility. One example of flexibility requirements was that the new 

solution had to work with existing applications transparently, so that HP staff 
would not have to spend time with custom configurations.