dell enterprise technology center series

Implementation Study:
Dell IT Scales Supply
Chain Management with Oracle RAC 10g
By Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.
Todd Muirhead
Tiong Tey
Raveendra Avutu

T

When the expensive proprietary servers running the Dell supply chain management systems had reached their limits, the Dell
IT group migrated to cost-effective, standards-based Dell ™
PowerEdge™ servers running Oracle® Real Application Clusters 10g.
This architecture helped enhance database performance while providing scalability for future growth.

tiple locations around the world. Using the same processes

worldwide manufacturing operations, including the

for disaster recovery, backup, and monitoring across all
Dell operations enables Dell IT to take advantage of a cost-

delivery of computers, accessories, parts, and supplies. These

effective and readily supported deployment model. This

systems must be designed for reliability and cost-effective scal-

Database

implemented this type of system for Dell operations at mul-

systems handle key business functions that support

efficient Dell inventory management model and fast, direct

Related Categories:

he Dell supply chain management (SCM) database

article describes how Dell IT migrated its critical SCM appli-

ability: a failure can cost thousands of dollars per minute in

cations from proprietary UNIX-based servers to industry-

factory downtime, and the SCM systems must be able to

standard Dell hardware.

handle increasing workloads as the company grows.
When Dell was a smaller company than it is now, before

Dell supply chain management

Dell Enterprise
Technology Center

the development of powerful, industry-standard servers of

The Dell SCM system must handle an enormous number of

Implementation study

the type that Dell manufactures, the Dell IT group ran its SCM

transactions and pieces of information, and includes multi-

database applications on large, expensive, proprietary serv-

ple core components necessary to keep operations running

ers based on the UNIX® OS. However, as the company grew,

smoothly:

Oracle
Scalable enterprise
Visit www.dell.com/powersolutions

servers lacking the necessary capacity had to be replaced with even larger, more powerful servers. And because the

• Configuration management: The configuration manage-

servers were not redundant, updating a single server often

ment component manages over 1 million Dell part num-

required shutting down entire systems.

for the complete category index.

bers per year across approximately 200 product families,

The increased performance of industry-standard Dell

and over 2 million bills of materials (BOMs) per year.

PowerEdge servers, however, has enabled Dell IT to create

BOMs listing component part numbers are created for

cost-effective, highly scalable systems using Oracle Real

manufacturing facilities to build assemblies and sub­

Application Clusters (RAC) 10g. By sharing a large database

assemblies for Dell products.

across multiple PowerEdge servers, Dell IT can easily deploy

1.8 million purchase order lines per year from more than

increased workloads rather than buying additional large,

5,000 suppliers worldwide. To streamline the procurement

expensive, proprietary UNIX-based servers. Dell IT has
50

• Procurement: The procurement component manages nearly

additional low-cost servers when necessary to handle

process, Dell uses an automated application that includes

DELL POWER SOLUTIONS | May 2007

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

managed the production database on Oracle
Database 8.0.6. The disaster recovery server
Production data center

had 12 processors at 336 MHz and 6 GB of memory. Arrays running the EMC® Symmetrix® platform provided disk storage.
To make the system highly available, Dell IT used Sun Cluster to cluster the primary and secondary servers in an active/passive configuration connected to shared disk storage, enabling

Primary
Sun E����

Secondary
Sun E����

the database to fail over to the passive node if

EMC Symmetrix

the active one failed. The failover was initiated
EMC SRDF

Domain Name System (DNS) alias for failover

Sun Cluster

Disaster recovery data center

when the passive node no longer detected a heartbeat signal from the active node. The failover disconnected all users, who would then have to reconnect to the newly active server.

Current system: Oracle RAC on Dell PowerEdge servers
By 2005, the performance of the proprietary
Disaster recovery
Sun E����

EMC Symmetrix

system was becoming a concern, with many of the batch processes taking a long time to complete—the end-of-quarter batch process job, for example, could take up to 31 hours. In addition, the Oracle Database version was out-

Figure 1. Previous Dell supply chain management system based on proprietary UNIX-based servers

dated and unsupported, and because it did not support Oracle RAC, Dell IT could not add capac-

workflow approvals and vendor communica-

In addition to these order-related transac-

ity by horizontal scaling. To continue using this

tion and enables services such as defective

tions, the SCM system also runs several other

system would have required a large investment

part replacement.

batch process jobs to aggregate data each week,

in upgrading these large, expensive servers.

• Cost: The cost component runs mostly in

month, or quarter.

batch mode to calculate the costs to Dell for

In the North America region, the Oracle

all BOMs. These batch jobs run weekly,

Database application for SCM consists of

monthly, and quarterly, with each job aggre-

approximately 3,000 database objects (func-

gating total material costs.

tions, packages, procedures, triggers, tables,

Instead, Dell decided to migrate to a cost-

• Inventory: The inventory component man-

and views). This SCM system is supported by

ages more than 3 million inventory move-

six PowerEdge 2650 application servers, five

ments daily from stock rooms to factory

more than 50 system-to-system integrations,

corresponding 3 million messages transmit-

approximately 125 batch jobs, and approxi-

ted to different systems for reporting, analy-

mately 500 user interfaces.

TALK BACK

internally developed Web-based applications,

floors across all Dell sites, along with the

effective, industry standards–based platform,

Tell us how the Dell Enterprise Technology Center can help your organiza-

sis, and factory scheduling. component handles approximately 15,000

Previous system: Proprietary
UNIX-based servers

items per day, including payments to Dell

The previous Dell SCM system used Sun E6000-

suppliers, invoices, and receipts. Vendor

class UNIX-based servers running the Sun

Send your feedback and ideas to

information includes vendor ID number,

Solaris 8 OS and Sun Cluster 2.2 (see Figure 1).

location, negotiated terms, and contact

The primary and secondary servers, each with

enterprise_techcenter@dell.com.

information.

16 processors at 336 MHz and 11 GB of memory,

• Accounts payable: The accounts payable

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

tion better simplify, utilize, and scale enterprise solutions and platforms.

www.dell.com/powersolutions

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dell enterprise technology center series

apply them, which allows the database to stay in sync and helps prevent physical corruptions from being copied to the disaster recovery data-

Production data center

base. The second cluster uses SRDF to ship changed blocks at the storage level in real time

Primary Oracle RAC 10g cluster

from the primary site to the disaster recovery site. This method is fast but does not guard against data corruption. The combination of
EMC SRDF

Oracle Data Guard redo log shipping

EMC Symmetrix

Disaster recovery data center

Data Guard and SRDF provides both fast and secure data replication.
Dell IT also uses several other programs to provide key backup, load balancing, and administration capabilities:

EMC SRDF disaster recovery Oracle RAC 10g cluster

• Oracle Recovery Manager: Dell IT uses this program to back up the primary database
EMC Symmetrix

and archive logs. Two full (hot) backups are made to tape weekly through the EMC
NetWorker™ interface; archive logs are backed up hourly to enable Dell IT to recover

Oracle Data Guard disaster recovery Oracle RAC 10g cluster

the database to a specific point in time if necessary. Dell IT can also back up the database from the disaster recovery site rather
EMC Symmetrix

than taxing the primary nodes.
• Oracle Database 10g Services: This software provides load balancing for each cluster—for example, Dell IT can have three nodes

Figure 2. Current Dell supply chain management system based on Oracle RAC 10g and Dell
PowerEdge servers

handle online users and three nodes handle batch processing.
• Oracle Grid Control: This software provides

replacing the Sun servers with Oracle RAC 10g

is seamless and transparent to users, users do

monitoring and management capabilities

clusters of Dell PowerEdge 6650 servers, each

not have to reconnect, as they did in the previ-

and helps simplify many day-to-day data-

with four Intel® Xeon® processors (see Figure 2).

ous system.

base administration tasks; it also allows

The environment includes a primary cluster and

One of the disaster recovery clusters uses

administrators to set thresholds for different

two disaster recovery clusters. While the previ-

Oracle Data Guard software, and the other uses

events to create trouble tickets through the

ous system could not scale beyond one physical

EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF®)

problem management system.

server, the current system allows Dell IT to easily

software. The first cluster uses the Data Guard

add servers to the clusters to handle increased

Broker component to ship logs in real time from

Dell IT has implemented these clusters at mul-

workloads. The multi-node Oracle RAC architec-

the primary site to the disaster recovery site and

tiple locations around the world (see Figure 3).

ture can also provide higher I/O throughput than the previous system because of the increased number of available interfaces.
The Oracle RAC 10g architecture includes built-in high-availability features. All Oracle RAC nodes and instances share the same physical database; if any of these experience problems, the users and connections can fail over to the other nodes or instances. Because this failover
52

DELL POWER SOLUTIONS | May 2007

“Standardizing on cost-effective Oracle RAC 10g

clusters of PowerEdge servers with Dell/EMC storage helped Dell IT deploy the systems globally in just eight months.”
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

Standardizing on cost-effective Oracle RAC 10g

data extraction for all material movements

SCM systems to provide real-time information

clusters of PowerEdge servers with Dell/EMC stor-

transactions, which dropped from almost

about key business functions. Running these sys-

age, with similar processes for deployment, disas-

5 hours to just 35 minutes for an 88 percent

tems on Oracle RAC 10g clusters of industry-

ter recovery, and backup, helped Dell IT deploy

improvement, while the time for the entire

standard Dell PowerEdge servers enables Dell IT

the systems globally in just eight months.

end-of-quarter jobs processing decreased

to scale them efficiently and cost-effectively to

from 31 hours to 23 hours.

handle increased workloads. By moving the sys-

Performance increases

tems to Dell servers when it did, Dell IT avoided significant additional expenditures for proprietary

mance for both the previous and current SCM

Cost-effective, scalable supply chain management systems. Figure 4 shows the 10 longest end-

Supply chain management is essential to Dell

provided a clear path for future growth.

of-month and end-of-quarter transactions. The

operations around the world, with both factory

most significant time savings occurred in the

operations and internal systems dependent on

Dell engineers measured database perfor-

UNIX-based servers, enhanced performance, and

Dave Jaffe, Ph.D., is a senior consultant on the
Dell Enterprise Technology Center team. He has a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University and a

Region

Primary site

Disaster recovery site

Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of

North America

Six-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster

Two sets of six-node Oracle RAC 10g clusters

California, San Diego.

China

Three-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster

Three-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster

Brazil

Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster

Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster

Europe

Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster

Two-node Oracle RAC 10g cluster

Malaysia

Two sets of two-node Oracle RAC 10g clusters

Two sets of two-node Oracle RAC 10g clusters

Todd Muirhead is a senior engineering consultant on the Dell Enterprise Technology Center team.
Todd has a B.A. in Computer Science from the
University of North Texas and is Microsoft Certified
Systems Engineer + Internet (MCSE+I) certified.

Figure 3. Global deployment of Dell supply chain management systems

Tiong Tey is an IT strategist on the Dell World
Wide Procurement IT team. Tiong has a B.S. and

Transaction

Time on previous system (hours:minutes)

Time on current system (hours:minutes)

Performance gain

Entire end-of-quarter jobs processing 31:00

23:00

26%

Cost-per-order calculation

8:52

5:40

36%

Quarterly BOM calculation

7:30

1:56

74%

Entire end-of-month jobs processing 6:00

4:00

33%

New product material costs calculation 5:56

2:17

62%

Data summary for all levels of order details

5:33

1:58

65%

Data extraction for all material movements transactions

4:49

0:35

88%

Costs roll-up (materials, royalties, and transportation)

3:18

3:12

3%

Material management transactions creation based on inventory transactions 3:00

0:43

76%

Financial journal entries creation

2:37

a master’s degree in Computer Science from
Wichita State University.
Raveendra Avutu is an IT manager in the Global
Data Management group supporting databases for Dell IT. Raveendra has a master’s degree in
Computer Science from Oklahoma State University.

QUICK LINKs

0:40

75%

Figure 4. Performance gains for 10 longest database transactions in Dell supply chain management systems
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May 2007. Copyright © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

Dell Enterprise Technology Center: www.dell.com/techcenter Dell and Oracle Database 10g: www.dell.com/oracle10g Oracle and Dell: www.dell.com/oracle www.dell.com/powersolutions

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