subtwo services
Application Readiness Service
The Sub2-Application Readiness Service (Sub2-ARS) is Sub2, Inc’s installation and configuration service for enterprise level server and storage environments. It is available both to equipment manufacturers and software companies needing to augment their professional services staff as well as to end customers desiring professional, independent, highly competent design and deployment of their application’s server and storage environment.
The Sub2-ARS is divided into several phases to ensure the customer’s hardware, operating system, middleware, and storage environment will meet desired performance and availability goals.
Design Phase
Sub2 engineers bring years of experience testing and deploying “best of breed” technology solutions to the table to assist the customer in designing robust, application-ready environments. Experience with very large-scale projects for customers like Verizon, JPMorganChase, Standard & Poors, and Sun Microsystems is the backbone of Sub2‘s design expertise. Poor performance, limited scalability, and unacceptable system outages in most cases can be traced back to an inadequate design. For this reason, Sub2-ARS engineers spend the time required to evaluate the customer’s existing design, legacy interfaces, and performance and availability goals to assist in aligning the final design with best practices and products. The deliverable this phase produces is a Design Specification Document.
Deployment Phase
Sub2 is unique in that its engineers are expert at design as well as deployment. They have extensive experience installing and configuring server and storage hardware, operating systems and middleware. In fact, the product experience they boast reads like a veritable “Who’s Who” of technology companies – Sun Microsystems, EMC, Veritas, Microsoft, Brocade, Emulex, Hitachi, IBM, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Sybase, Peoplesoft, SAP. A unique part of Sub2‘s Deployment phase is its emphasis on mentoring while the design is implemented. While this is not a requirement imposed on the customer’s staff, Sub2 believes that companies that take advantage of this mentoring will be better prepared to support their critical environments and to plan for future growth. The deliverables this phase produces are a Build Specification Document and the complete implementation of the Design Specification Document.
Test Phase
In spite of the movement towards heightened interoperability, protocol standardization and virtual products, or perhaps because of that movement, today’s technology environments are more complex than ever before. For this reason, no Sub2-ARS is considered complete without the execution of a thorough, custom Test Procedure Plan. Functionality like storage and network multipathing, dynamic reconfiguration, mirrored storage, automated failover and secure operating environments can and should be demonstrably tested before the environment is signed off as acceptable by the customer. The deliverable from this phase is the Test Procedure Plan Document, which is signed both by the Sub2 engineer who performed the tests and the customer representative who witnessed each test.
Summary
A Sub2-ARS can be ordered for any Sun Microsystems server platform, regardless of the scale of the planned environment. A basic Sub2-ARS includes the following:
- Architectural design review
- Setup and configuration of a single server
- Operating System load and configuration per customer design
- Server-side storage configuration of up to one terabyte of file system space
- Testing
- Documentation.
More complex customer environments, e.g. high availability clustering, multi- site disaster recovery implementations, custom scripting, SAN configuration etc. require a scope review and will be quoted based on an estimate of the time and materials required for completion.
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