Bull Direct N°29, September 2008

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MN Services has signed with Bull a contract valued at €1.8 million

MN Services adopts Bull Escala high-end servers based on the new Power6 technology to support new services

MN Services, the second-largest pension fund in the Netherlands, has signed with Bull a contract valued at €1.8 million for the delivery, implementation and support services of two high-end Bull Escala PL6460 servers.
Over the last year, MN Services made various acquisitions, and experienced rapid growth in its customer base. Its current server infrastructure could not support the significant increase in processing capacity that resulted. The new Escala servers delivered by Bull are based on the latest PowerPC® processor technology from IBM, and provide MN Services with sufficient processing power to support its activities today and in the future.

The two Bull Escala super servers are the largest commercial AIX® servers currently available. Based on the Power6 processors, they will be running a combination of AIX6 and Linux®. These are the first systems based on Power6 technology of this magnitude to be delivered in the Benelux. As a result of this contract, MN Services will be able to deliver the performance and reliability required by its online services in the Netherlands.

Apart from the infrastructure, implementation and local support services, Bull will also provide HA999 support services. This service guarantees MN Services 99.9% uptime. The systems will be actively monitored from Bull’s High Availability Center in Grenoble, France. Additional benefits of the new infrastructure include its scalability: the servers allow for remote scalability up to 64 CPU’s. They will be installed in two separate data centers, one in Rijswijk and the other in Amsterdam to ensure a fully redundant infrastructure.

Ronald Bebber, IT Infrastructure manager at MN Services said: “Bull has been our preferred supplier for our enterprise systems for many years. They have proven once again that they can deliver the level of flexibility and support we strive ourselves to deliver to our customers. Thanks to the robustness and scalability of these systems, MN Services, and indirectly our customers, will benefit significantly from this contract.”