Case Study
Pella increases
infrastructure performance
Objective
Move to open systems to reduce
operating expense, avoid licensing costs
and deliver incremental capacity
Approach
Migrate to HPE Integrity Superdome X
Servers running Linux to avoid
incremental licensing costs while
improving performance and scalability
IT Matters
• Migrate Oracle databases to an open
systems environment
• Ensure redundancy and disaster
recovery for mission-critical ERP, human
resources, data warehousing and order
processing applications
• Port 26 production databases from UNIX
to Linux
• Preserve always-on availability of critical
databases and applications
Business Matters
• Ensured 7x24x365 operations while
porting business-critical applications and
databases
• Saved $200,000 per year in operating
expenses
• Avoided incremental Oracle database
licence investments of $200,000 as well
as associated ongoing support costs
• Significantly improved server
performance and long-term capacity
• Maximised ROI by shifting from a leasing
model to a purchasing model for server
infrastructure
and scalability
Modernises IT and avoids costs by migrating
to HPE Integrity Superdome X
Pella needed a reliable,
scalable and highperforming infrastructure
that could also help reduce
its Oracle software licensing
costs. Pella selected the
Superdome X running
Linux to support its Oracle
Business Suite and Oracle
Database 10g environment
and achieve its performance,
scalability and cost
objectives.
Founded in 1925, Pella Corporation
manufactures its premium-quality windows
and doors at 10 locations across the United
States. This industry innovator produces both
standardised and made-to-order products
according to lean manufacturing principles.
Following a continuous improvement process
model, Pella delivers high-quality products
to customers while squeezing out waste as
eiciently as possible.
Case study
Pella
Industry
Manufacturing
“We embrace the scalability, flexibility and long-term economics of
Superdome X. It allows us to reduce our operational costs and avoid
incremental Oracle licensing costs. In addition, we have the flexibility to scale
up and scale out to support increased performance requirements for our
mission-critical ERP applications over time.”
– Jim Thomas, Director of IT Operations, Pella
Page 2
Thousands of customer
orders flow into Pella’s
Oracle-based enterprise
resource planning (ERP)
system each day from
the firm’s network of
showrooms as well as from
leading retailers. Because
its products are highly
configurable, Pella custommanufactures a high
percentage of its windows
and doors and operates a
very large Oracle database
to track the massive volume
of configurable products it
manages.
Pella sought to increase the performance and
scalability of its Oracle Business Suite ERP
applications and Oracle 10G database, while
driving down operational costs and avoiding
a significant Oracle licensing investment. Pella
had been relying on HPE Superdome servers
for nine years, and as the lease for its HPE
Integrity Superdome 2 Servers was reaching
its expiration date, Pella evaluated its options.
“We were extremely happy with Superdome
servers and the HP-UX operating system
but changes in the Oracle software licensing
model drove us to evaluate open system
platforms,” says Jim Thomas, director of IT
Operations. “Many years ago it was the other
way around, but now we’re making more
strategic IT decisions based on software
costs. We wanted to drive down our operation
costs and avoid incremental licensing costs,
so we looked at x86 server platforms running
Linux so we could best manage our software
licence expenses.”
Case study
Pella
Industry
Manufacturing
Page 3
Selecting an industry
standard server
After evaluating Oracle Exadata, Pella
selected the HPE Integrity Superdome X
Server to run its Oracle ERP environment.
According to Kenny Nedder, IT manager
of Infrastructure Projects and Architecture,
“We made our final decision based on a
combination of cost and comfort. We needed
to make a platform migration to deliver
necessary capacity and control our software
licensing fees. We view both Hewlett Packard
Enterprise (HPE) and Oracle as strategic
partners, so this decision was critical to Pella.
We’ve been very pleased with the Superdome
platforms and they’ve done very well for us.
We concluded we would minimise operating
and software licensing costs by deploying
Superdome X.”
Superdome X Server delivers a superior x86
availability experience to increase competitive
advantage, and it oers ground-breaking
performance so customers can respond
rapidly to the demands of the business.
Flexibility and long-term ROI were also major
factors in its selection. “We’ve enjoyed a
great deal of flexibility with our Superdome
deployments,” Nedder explains. “For
example, midway through our Superdome
2 deployment we upgraded the chipset to
improve performance without altering our
licensing model. We anticipate being able to
make similar cost-eective enhancements
throughout the life cycle of Superdome X.”
Thomas adds, “We were pleased with the
flexibility of the Superdome X price structure
and the ability to size the platforms for our
environment. We really embrace the long-term
economics of the Superdome X platform. We
have leased previous server platforms, but we
purchased Superdome X Servers because we
believe they will have a long life cycle of useful
service to our computing infrastructure.”
Migrating to Superdome X
The company chose to migrate to two HPE
Superdome X Servers running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6.5. They are deployed at
two data centres in Iowa. The primary server
has 40 cores and two blades paired together
to run production applications. The second
server has 30 cores and two blades. One of
the blades supports failover, and the other
supports a software development and quality
assurance environment.
Pella is able to isolate critical applications
from other applications with HPE’s unique
x86 hard partitioning. On the primary server,
the two blades are configured in a single nPar
partition, and in the second server each of
the blades is configured as a separate nPar
partition.
The servers are connected over dark fibre.
Pella’s separate hot-backup site for its
production ERP environment links to the
production system via HPE Serviceguard
for Linux clustering technology. This set-up
ensures business continuity in the event of a
disaster and eliminates single points of failure.
Pella has implemented a fully redundant
configuration to support disaster recovery.
HPE Data Protector is used to back up the
servers as if they were individual servers.
They use HPE products for most of the
integrated backup.
Pella has successfully migrated from UNIX
to Linux, and ported all 26 Oracle databases
to run on x86 Superdome X Servers. The
Superdome X Servers deliver significantly
greater capacity and avoided incremental
database licences. Pella has improved
performance and scalability while ensuring
mission-critical reliability for its ERP
applications. By combining smart technology
with expert consultation, HPE Proactive Care
Advanced Services provide a personalised
and proactive hands-on approach to
maintaining an agile, healthy and reliable
infrastructure.
Case study
Pella
Industry
Manufacturing
Page 4
Customer at a glance
Hardware
• HPE Integrity Superdome X Server
Software
• HPE Data Protector
• HPE Serviceguard for Linux
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5
HPE Technology Services
• HPE Proactive Care Advanced service
Pella relies on HPE Proactive Care Advanced
service to help maintain peak performance
for its Superdome X Servers and provide
expertise to quickly manage and resolve
problems. HPE Proactive Care Advanced
service helps Pella prevent problems and
ensure availability through preemptive
firmware revision management and
health checks. The servers are connected to
the HPE support infrastructure where they
are proactively monitored, and alerts are
automatically generated if firmware updates
or maintenance are required. “We’ve used
Proactive Care on all of our Superdomes
and find it helpful to have the proactive
monitoring and expert assistance,” says
Nedder.
Ensuring long-term
scalability and performance
Since deploying the Superdome X Servers,
Pella has reduced annual operating costs by
$200,000 while boosting server performance,
and avoided $200,000 for incremental
database licences. The combined Oracle
databases are roughly 15 TB, and the Oracle
application and database infrastructure
continues to grow. Pella is confident in the
long-term scalability and performance of its
hardware and software infrastructure.
“Our product set is highly configurable, with
numerous combinations of frames, glass,
finishings and shades,” Nedder states. “The
permutations of combinations that customers
can order are in the billions, which places
massive requirements on our database
engine every day. But we’ve designed the
performance, reliability and redundancy
necessary to support our operational goals,
and we can scale up and scale out our
servers, as needed over time, to support the
growth of our business.”
Thomas concludes, “We run on fixed lead
times with highly configurable products, and
the Superdome X Servers are running our
business. Migration to x86 and Linux went
smoothly. We had very high expectations
and Superdome X delivered on those
expectations.”
Learn more at
hpe.com/servers/superdomex
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© 2015 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only
warranties for HPE products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services.
Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HPE shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or
omissions contained herein.
4AA6-2731EEW, November 2015
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