Intec Telecom Systems and Sun Microsystems co-operate to beat carriers scalability problems in telecoms billing systems

• 40 CPU Sun processor and 4 Oracle instances hits major scalability target

• Latest client/server architecture offers linear scalability to growing carriers

New tests by Sun Microsystems and Intec Telecom Systems have demonstrated the scalability of complex, multi-processor, multi-database client/server architectures in one of the world’s most demanding online processing applications, telecomms billing. The purpose of the tests was to prove that InterconnecT, Intec Telecom Systems telecomms billing solution, running the Sun Solaris operating system on various Sun hardware platforms and Oracle database configurations, can scale from the needs of the smallest start-up telecommunication provider to the largest public telecommunications company.

The rapid growth in world-wide call volumes, new IP-based services, and the increase in telecomms product complexity are presenting many carriers with a problem – how to accept, process and store the huge amount of call information generated by their switches and mediation platforms. A major national carrier can handle upwards of 100 million calls per day. Processing these volumes in real time is very demanding, with some carriers struggling to cope with the problem. “Billing is a business-critical issue for all carriers, but they can only issue accurate bills if their systems can take the load,” said Intec Telecom Systems MD, Kevin Adams. “These test were designed to show that by implementing a very sophisticated parallel processing design, on state-of-the art hardware and database platforms, we can offer carriers the power and scalability they need.”

At maximum capacity, the tests indicated that in a single 8 hour period, on a Sun Enterprise 10000 server with 40x400MHZ CPUs, and 16GB of memory (this is significantly more memory than is required but reflects the benchmark machine configuration), InterconnecT can beat its key processing target with up to 66 million Call Data Records (CDRs) in batch throughput when running four Oracle database instances. Intec’s largest customer currently requires 60 million CDRs processed per 8 hour period.

Tests also proved that running on Sun platforms, with Oracle v7.3.4.0.1, good linear scalability was achievable by adding any of these types of improvements:

• additional CPUs
  
• additional servers
  
• additional Oracle database instances
  
• and by machine upgrade

Darren Peters, Global Alliances Manager of Sun Microsystems said “This flexibility in achieving scalability demonstrates the technical efficiency of the Sun/Oracle/Intec architecture. Customers can take whatever route to performance improvement is most suitable for them as their business volumes grow.”

Results in detail:

• A Sun Enterprise 4500, running 8x400 MHZ CPUs, 2 GB of memory and Oracle v7.3.4.0.1 peaked at 18.6 million CDRs in an 8 hour batch period.
  
• Adding multiple machines offers good scalability. One additional 4500 server, also with 8x400MHz CPUs, delivered 33 million CDRs, a scaling factor of 1.77; 2 additional machines (24x400Mhz CPUs in total) delivered 44.5million CDRs, a scaling factor of 2.37.
  
• Upgrading the server also offers scalability: a single Enterprise 6500 machine, running 24x336MHz CPUs, peaked at 30.7 million CDRs.
  
• Adding database instances offers scalability: Retaining the Enterprise 10000 machine, 16GB memory and database version, switching to 30x400MHz CPUs and two Oracle instances, 38 million CDRs were processed with a dramatic increase to 66 million CDR’s being processed switching to 40x400MHz CPUs and four Oracle instances.