Space Manager with LiveReorg allows Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC), a world leader in aviation engines, to reduce...
Case Study
Pratt & Whitney Canada Uses Quest Software’s Space Manager with LiveReorg® to Reduce Downtime and Accelerate User Response Time Space Manager with LiveReorg® allows Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC), a world leader in aviation engines, to reduce SAP system downtime from six hours a week to just a few hours per quarter. In addition, P&WC has improved overall system response time by approximately 20 percent, helping them to meet critical service levels.
The Challenge Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) is a world leader in aviation engines powering business and regional aircraft and helicopters. The company also offers advanced engines for industrial applications. P&WC’s operations and service network span the globe. P&WC customers require 24x7 system access to track
Overview “LiveReorg has taken the work out of the equation for us. Live reorganizations are automatic and problem-free—and we no longer compromise SAP system availability or performance in any way.” - Fernand Gosselin, Database Administrator for CSC, a consultancy working with Pratt & Whitney Canada
those engines and parts, so SLAs have been established to guarantee maximum availability for the global spare parts network. P&WC runs critical SAP applications used for maintenance, payroll, customer support and other company operations, supported by an Oracle 8.0.6 database. The SAP system contains over 22,000 tables (about four terabytes in total size), some with more than 80 million rows—and the system is growing daily.
Headquarters
When P&WC first went live with their SAP environment, the IT department had scheduled a weekly six-
Longueuil, Quebec
hour maintenance window for hardware upgrades, reorganizations and maintenance. However, that window did not give them enough time to reorganize many of the larger tables. As business expanded,
Services
was impossible using traditional reorganization procedures.
Provides aviation engines powering business and regional aircraft and helicopters
P&WC needed a solution that would provide them with the ability to reorganize their databases without
Critical Needs
the IT department experienced additional pressure to reduce or eliminate SAP system downtime. This
downtime, increase system availability and improve overall SAP system performance while requiring minimal maintenance from the company’s database administrators.
The Quest Solution The company evaluated several tools on the market, and the only tool that met all of their objectives was Quest Software’s Space Manager with LiveReorg®. Space Manager with LiveReorg’s patent-pending
A solution that would provide the ability to reorganize databases without downtime, increase system availability and improve overall SAP system performance while requiring minimal maintenance from the company’s database administrators
technology allows users to optimize database performance by reorganizing Oracle databases without
Solution
taking the system offline.
Space Manager with LiveReorg
P&WC has two sets of disks that are mirrored, resulting in four images of the production databases. Each
Results
of these is approximately one terabyte in size. When they reorganize a table, they actually reorganize four copies of that table simultaneously. They can also schedule Space Manager with LiveReorg to run on its own without supervision—a big advantage to the IT department and system users. “LiveReorg has taken the work out of the equation for us. Live reorganizations are automatic and problem-free—and we no longer compromise SAP system availability or performance in any way,” said Fernand Gosselin, database administrator for CSC, a consultancy working with P&WC. “From a technical standpoint, what I like about LiveReorg is that there’s a lot of usable functionality. For example, before LiveReorg, a reorganization of a 17 GB table took 7.5 hours. With LiveReorg, that same task takes a total of three hours and the switch over of the reorganized table takes seconds. In addition, we can schedule reorganizations to run over the weekend and no longer have to baby-sit the system while the maintenance is running,” said Gosselin. In P&WC’s rapidly growing environment, Space Manager with LiveReorg has helped improve global response time by approximately 20 percent.
• Reduced SAP system downtime from six hours a week to a few hours per quarter • Improved overall system response time by approximately 20 percent, helping to meet critical SLAs • Freed up IT resources to focus on more critical tasks
The Bottom Line “Before LiveReorg, we had to produce reports to enable the manual procedures required whenever the SAP environment was down. Now the SAP environment is never down, so we’ve eliminated those manual procedures,” said MacFarlane. This frees the IT department from wasted time, allowing the IT group to focus on new initiatives important to the company. Aviation operations are extremely mission-critical; strict regulations, and stringent time requirements are enforced for aircraft servicing. Space Manager with LiveReorg has allowed P&WC to provide vital products and services to customer’s 24x7x365, while adhering to aviation industry requirements. “In our industry, we cannot fail. LiveReorg has enabled us to correct our SAP system hotspots quickly so that we can meet our business goals, maintain our SLAs [Service Level Agreements] to customers, and keep our system up and running with little or no downtime,” claimed MacFarlane.
About Pratt & Whitney Canada Pratt & Whitney Canada, based in Longueuil, Quebec, is a world leader in aviation engines powering business and regional aircraft and helicopters. The company also offers advanced engines for industrial applications. P&WC’s operations and service network span the globe.
About Quest Software, Inc. Quest Software, Inc. delivers innovative products that help organizations get more performance and productivity from their applications, databases and Windows infrastructure. Through a deep expertise in IT operations and a continued focus on what works best, Quest helps more than 18,000 customers worldwide meet higher expectations for enterprise IT. Quest Software can be found in offices around the globe and at www.quest.com
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[email protected] © 2006 Quest Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Quest and LiveReorg are registered trademarks of Quest Software. All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Printed in the USA CSD_PrattandWhitney_100906_AG
