Korean Tour Operator undertakes the journey from UNIX to Linux.

In the process two different environments (Windows and Linux) are combined onto a single Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 540, mission critical IA (Intel® Architecture) server based on Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® processors.

System Introduction Background

Established in 1982, Sejoong Namo Tour, under the direction of its CEO and Chairman Mr. Shin-il Chun, has risen to become one of Korea's top three tourism companies. Initially focusing on business related services, it has more recently entered the packaged tourism market, to great effect. One interesting aspect of this company is that more than half of its ten subsidiary companies, including, Sejoong Consulting, Sejoong Information Technology etc., operate businesses in the fields of Information Technology (IT). The company name, 'Sejoong Namo Tour,' was in fact created after Sejoong Tour acquired another IT company called Namo Interactive. As a result, Sejoong Namo Tour is very willing to advance in the fields of computing. This interest is reflected in the ideas of the CEO and Chairman of the company. While many of his competitors in the domestic tourism industry are overly frugal in investing in IT, the philosophy of Chairman Chun is that IT is an area in which Sejoong Namo Tour should actively invest.

System Requirements

Sejoong Namo Tour’s existing UNIX system was based on obsolete server technology which had met its limits in capacity. This prompted the need for a change of platform. In addition, the groupware server which was based on a small IA system was also suffering problems including increasing I/O traffic and deteriorating performance. In July last year, this need for a new server environment promoted a project to integrate its key UNIX based Oracle Database (DB server), ERP server system and Microsoft Windows® based groupware. Explaining the background to the system integration project, Executive Director Jin-kook Lee of the Management Plans Office at Sejoong Namo Tour commented, "On the previous system, the key ERP system used a UNIX server and Oracle Database, while the groupware server used Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 and Informix DB. Operating the system under such different environments made management difficult and was expensive."

Executive Director Lee also explained that they saw the introduction of a large integration server as necessary because the company was planning to launch many full-scale IT development projects in the near future. In a situation where they needed to both upgrade the current servers and also purchasing new systems, as necessary, Sejoong Namo Tour sought a strategy that enabled them to introduce a large integration server that would also resolve problems such as limited server deployment space and insufficient manpower for management. With this in mind, Sejoong Namo Tour decided to establish a platform environment where all work servers could be integrated into a single large server instead of introducing multiple small servers for each work unit.

System Introduction

Sejoong Namo Tour searched for a server that could satisfy the following:

System Benefits

In addition to enjoying the benefits of reduced costs and more convenience operation; following the introduction of the Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 540 Sejoong Namo Tour moved its server room, previously located in a corner of its office, to an IDC. Currently, the single Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 540 is operating four systems. These include the ERP DB server, groupware DB server, and BTMS (Business Travel Management System). The high performance of these systems is made possible by the use of the XPAR (Extended Partitioning) function of PRIMEQUEST, which operates multiple independent systems on a single server. It also allows operation of a standby mode to provide a High Availability (HA) environment, where normal operation can be secured even when one of the systems faces an error. In addition, by duplicating the SAN switch, downtime can also be minimized.

Sejoong Namo Tour has achieve multiple benefits including, reduced deployment costs, convenient operation, faster processing speeds, maximized utilization of resources. In particular, due to the advantages of being able to implement multiple OS and DB on the PRIMEQUEST, system operation and maintenance have became much more convenient. Sejoong Namo Tour expects to reduce costs further when they introduce another new server in the future.

Interview

“Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST is the server that we've been looking for”

Q. Is the Sejoong Namo Tour project a good example of integrating & operating different OS and DB on a single system?
A. The project is meaningful since it allowed integration of a key server such as ERP with groupware and our BTMS server, a real-time flight/hotel reservation system. It also allowed us to selected Linux instead of UNIX which was previously used for the system platform.

Q. Why did you choose a large IA server for your integrated system?
A. We realized that a large IA server is competitive in both performance and price. In particular, Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST has the capacity to host various OS and DB systems. It fully satisfied our demands for reducing costs and establishing a convenient operation environment through system integration. We also decided to introduce a large server because we are planning to reestablish the overall systems of the company.