Quanta Computer

Quanta Computer Gains 80 Percent Data Compression for SAP with SQL Server 2008

Quanta Computer has a global workforce of 30,000 generating annual revenue of U.S.$25 billion as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of laptop computers and other computing devices for the biggest names in the industry ranging from Apple iPods to notebooks, laptops, and other devices for Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba and other pillars of the computing industry. With its SAP database supporting its global operations growing by more than half a terabyte a month, Quanta needed either to replace its SAN infrastructure or to find a compression solution. The company upgraded to Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Enterprise (64-bit) to take advantage of new SQL Server compression technology. SQL Server 2008 Database Compression has reduced some tables by as much as 90 percent, while SQL Server 2008 Backup Compression has provided compression of 85 percent.

Situation

Quanta Computer generates annual revenue of U.S.$25 billion as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of laptop computers. The company is also one of the world’s most respected organizations, ranked 12th on “2008 World’s Most Admired Companies” by Fortune Magazine.

Based in Taiwan, the Fortune 500 Company has a global logistics network that includes more than 30,000 employees, who work together to design, develop, and manufacture high-value products and solutions for global brands including ACER, Apple (including the iPod), Cisco, Compaq, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba.

Managing such a large global operation requires an enterprise-grade IT infrastructure including a powerful enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Quanta has long run its entire business using the Microsoft® Application Platform, and for ERP uses SAP running on Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database software and the Windows Server® 2003 operating system.

Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 and taking advantage of the Data Compression feature has enabled us to extend the useful life of our SANs. We are seeing data compression in excess of 80 percent. TJ Fang Chief Information Officer, Quanta Computer

In 2007 Quanta began a program to consolidate its three largest SAP instances into a single SAP instance and a single SAP client. The project, called 3:1, involved upgrading the existing SAP 4.6C system to SAP ECC 6.0 and converting from non-Unicode Asian character set to Unicode to fully support all Asian languages. The new centralized SAP infrastructure included a single instance of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) hosted on an HP Integrity Superdome computer with 64 dual-core processors and 256 gigabytes (GB) of RAM.

Applications are hosted on 19 blade computers, 10 Intel Nehalem 2 CPU Quad-core server with 32 GB of RAM, and 9 Intel Woodcrest Dual-Core servers with 16 GB of RAM. The Intel Nehalem application servers are running the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise for 64-Bit Systems operating system. Storage is on two HP EVA 8100 storage area network (SAN) units using HP Continuous Access SAN replication.

The solution went live in July of 2008 and was considered a complete success, with the infrastructure supporting 2.5 million SAP dialog steps per day with an average total response time of half a second.

As part of the 3:1 project the original 5-terabyte SAP database was reduced to less than 1 terabyte by archiving historical data, and only moving master data to the new system. The company generates so much business, though, and tracks so many products, that by the end of 2008 the SAP database had already grown to 4 terabytes, including 660 GBs of growth in just December.

Looking at SAP database growth of more than half a terabyte a month, the company was rapidly running out of SAN space. “Our transaction volume and business requirements mean we have to keep a lot of data online rather than archived,” says TJ Fang, Chief Information Officer at Quanta Computer. “Our SAP database growth rate meant we had only a matter of months until our SAN storage would need to be upgraded or replaced. We needed to find a solution.”

Solution

Quanta found its solution by upgrading to SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of new data compression features. The company worked with the Microsoft SAP Center of Excellence, regional Microsoft resources, and local Microsoft Services to gain the confidence that the Data Compression and Backup Compression features of SQL Server 2008 were enterprise-ready for its global operations. As part of its research, Quanta looked at how Microsoft has benefited from using SQL Server 2008 Data Compression with the 6-terabyte SAP instance used for Microsoft’s global operations.

Impressed by what it saw, Quanta decided on upgrading to take advantage of compression. The upgrade to SQL Server 2008 was performed with just four hours of scheduled downtime. Table compression was performed online, with no discernable impact on processing resources.

For high availability, the SQL Server 2008 instance supporting the SAP database was deployed using Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering technology to create a two-node active/passive cluster using two HP Integrity Superdome computers, each with 64 processors and 256 GB of RAM. In addition to SAN level synchronous replication, Quanta has deployed SQL Server 2008 Log Shipping with a delay interval to protect their system against logical application-level corruption. 

Looking ahead, the company is planning to use the low-cost SATA storage for Log Shipping possibly at a different site in Taiwan or abroad.

Benefits

Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (64-bit) has enabled Quanta Computer to gain up to 90 percent data compression on some of its largest tables while enjoying the uptime enabled by online compression. The company has also found 85 percent backup compression. An additional benefit has been the ease of upgrading to SQL Server 2008.

Migrating SAP from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 was very easy to do. … It was also simple to implement data compression once up on SQL Server 2008. TJ Fang Chief Information Officer, Quanta Computer

Up to 90 Percent Data Compression
Quanta Computer has been impressed by the compression it has seen since upgrading to SQL Server 2008 and taking advantage of the Data Compression feature. SQL Server 2008 Data Compression keeps data pages compressed in the data buffer effectively caching more data and reducing disk IO, contributing to faster response times.

Quanta uses SQL Server 2008 page compression, which stores a repeating value only once per page and sets a pointer from the respective columns within the page. Using page compression, the company's SAP ACCTIT table was compressed from 211 GB to 26 GB.  The SAP COSP table was compressed from 462 GB to 89 GB.

By the time Quanta had upgraded to SQL Server 2008, its SAP database had grown to more than 5 terabytes. By using page compression on the top 140 tables in its system, Quanta was able to save more than 2 terabytes of space while at the same time maintaining a 500-millisecond dialog response time. The performance impact of SQL Server 2008 page compression is hardly noticeable with modern power hardware. The entire table compression process is fully online and does not adversely impact performance while a table is being compressed.

“Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 and taking advantage of the Data Compression feature has enabled us to extend the useful life of our SANs,” says Fang. “We are seeing data compression in excess of 80 percent, in some cases up to 90 percent. Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 was far faster, cheaper, and easier to implement than a SAN upgrade would have been.”

Compression Performed Online
Quanta Computer was relieved to find that the Data Compression feature of SQL Server 2008 works while the database is online, and doesn’t require downtime or locking. Additionally the company found that the extreme efficiency of the compression algorithms meant there was very little impact on processors during compression so production work wasn’t adversely affected.

“With SQL Server 2008, the data compression runs in the background, while users continue to access the information,” says Fang. “There is only a minor, virtually undetectable performance hit from compressing tables online. Because compression enables us to have more data in cache, overall performance can actually be enhanced.”

85 Percent Backup Compression
Quanta Computer is using the Backup Compression feature of SQL Server 2008 to save additional resources and to simplify database maintenance. The company reports backup compression rates of about 85 percent.

With SQL Server 2008 backup compression, the compression is performed in memory before the data is transferred to disk. Backups run significantly faster since less disk I/O is required. Backup compression reduces the storage required to keep backups online, reducing the overall cost of keeping disk-based backups.

“The backup compression rates we’re seeing from SQL Server 2008, which are about 8.5 to 1, are significantly reducing the time required to perform backups, as well as the size of the backup image,” notes Fang.

Ease of Upgrading to SQL Server 2008
Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 was easy for Quanta Computer, as was taking advantage of the Data Compression and Backup Compression features. The SQL 2008 upgrade required only 4 hours of downtime.

“Migrating SAP from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 was very easy to do,” says Fang. “We required less than four hours of downtime. For our operations, it was easily worth upgrading to SQL Server 2008 just to take advantage of the new compression technology. It was also simple to implement data compression once up on SQL Server 2008.”

SAP-AG in Germany quickly supported SQL Server 2008. Both Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 have achieved General Availability for all SAP customers.

Summary
In summary, Quanta Computer was able to achieve compression rates of up to 90 percent by upgrading to SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of the new compression features included with the database software. By using SQL Server 2008 Data Compression to reduce the size of its SAP database by more than 2 terabytes, the company extended the useful life of its SAN infrastructure.

 

Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008
Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 provide a secure and trusted foundation for creating and running your most demanding applications. Combined, the products offer advanced security technology, developer support for the latest platforms, improved management and Web tools, flexible virtualization technology to optimize your infrastructure, and access to relevant information throughout your organization.

For more information about Windows Server 2008, go to: www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

For more information about SQL Server 2008, go to: www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/default.mspx

For more information about Visual Studio 2008, go to: www.microsoft.com/vstudio

For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/

For more information about Quanta Computer products and services, visit the Web site at: http://www.quantatw.com/

 

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published March 2009