Since February 2007, Seoul National University (hereinafter SNU) has been reconstructing its portal infrastructure. Scheduled to be completed by the end of August this year, the reconstruction project aims to improve user convenience by upgrading the old portal, as well as achieving a stable operation environment from dual operation servers. For use as the new portal operation servers, SNU introduced two PRIMEQUEST 520, Fujitsuâ??s IA server based on Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® processor. Moreover, SNU chose Linux as the operating system for the portal.

SNU portal infrastructure was first constructed in 2003. The major details of this recent replacement project include; Providing menus and customized information based on the type of user; Directly organizing the portal page based on the personal preferences of the users; Support for the integrated management of personal, academic and in-school schedules; One-click searching of new emails, lending status of books, etc., from the main screen of the portal; Plus, improved stability of operation by duplex portal operation servers.

Aiming to construct a stable system infrastructure

Last February, SNU selected contractors for the project. Then, for two months from April, the university collected user opinions regarding improvement of the portal. Finally, in June, the university designed a draft for the portal and chose its service name(my SNU, http://my.snu.kr). Managers from major system departments participated in this portal reconstruction project including e-learning developers, library managers, members from the career development center, e-Administration support team, security team, etc.

On physical reconstruction of the portal SNU introduced two PRIMEQUEST 520, Fujitsu IA servers based on Intel® Itanium® processor, as the portalâ??s operation servers. Previously, SNU operated its portal servers using system resources on a large UNIX server. Now by introducing servers exclusively for the portal, SNU aims to reinforce the stability of the system.

SNU first introduced the portal in 2003. At that time, the university divided the system resources of a large UNIX server into partitions to operate the various servers. Back then the portal was considered to be a relatively non-essential service compared to major services such as DB management. Accordingly, it was operated by partially using system resources instead of introducing an exclusive server.

Under such circumstances, SNU was limited in portal reconstruction as the previous operation server was obsolete with low performance. Stability as well as expandability had also fallen behind. Finally, the university decided to introduce a new portal server, Fujitsuâ??s IA server PRIMEQUEST.

Director Duk-Im Lee of the Web Service Team, University Computer Center of SNU, commented, â??Portal plays the role of a gateway for the university information system. Without a gateway, other work has no choice but be paralyzed. The portal infrastructure replacement project aims at providing customized service and constructing a stable system infrastructure.â?? Another reason for SNUâ??s introduction of the IA server is the high cost of operation/maintenance necessary for the pervious UNIX server.

As a portal system requires high stability and reliability, SNU has also put themselves in the spotlight by choosing Linux as the operating system for the reconstructed portal infrastructure. Regarding the background of choosing Linux, Director Duk-Im Lee said, â??As we are already operating web servers in a Linux environment, we found that Linux is quite competent and stable.â??

â??The reliability and stability of Fujitsu servers is satisfactoryâ??

In selecting its new portal server, SNU mostly emphasized reliability and stability. Even after deciding to introduce an IA server, many discussions occurred evaluating if the IA server could satisfy such reliability and stability needs. After reviewing many IA servers, including the one provided by Fujitsu, SNU judged â??IA servers can satisfy both reliability and stability as much as UNIX servers.â?? The university evaluated that IA servers can realize a stable operation if the major hardware has a duplex construction.

Especially, Fujitsuâ??s PRIMEQUEST based on Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® processor was very attractive with its functions of reinforcing system stability such as a system mirror, flexible I/O, etc. Praising the system mirror and flexible I/O, Director Duk-Im Lee commented, â??Fujitsuâ??s PRIMEQUEST has many outstanding functions!.â??

The system mirror of PRIMEQUEST is a function for maximizing work usability by the dualing of major hardware such as memory, chipsets, etc. For example, when an error occurs in memory, the system mirror separates the effected memory from the system to secure uninterrupted work.

On the other hand, flexible I/O allows free access between system boards and I/O units to guarantee flexible changes in system configuration. Compared to other servers where the access between system boards and I/O units is fixed and lowers usability of resources, PRIMEQUEST has a flexible I/O function which reduces TCO by efficiently allocating CPU, memory and I/O resources required.

By introducing two Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 520 with such functions and by organizing them into a cluster with an Active- Active structure, SNU secured an environment with high availability (HA). In reconstructing its portal server, SNU also introduced new storage system, Fujitsu â??ETERNUSâ?? with a capacity of 1.0TB.

Scheduled to be fully operational by the end of August, the new portal system of SNU is currently (as at the middle of August) going through testing and migration. Emphasizing that there isnâ??t much problem in migration, Director Duk-Im Lee commented, â??Since the portal platform is being totally reconstructed, there isn't much migration work to do for the application. All we need to do is migrate important data.â?? Besides the portal itself, SNU also introduced software such as WAS, backup, etc., as well as hardware such as portal operation server and storage during this project.

SNU expects that the new portal system will provide convenience to users such as professors, students and staff, in finding the information they need, as well as improving work efficiency by systematic operation of all information systems.