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When millions of automobile buyers and sellers want to know how much their used cars are worth or get the lowdown on dealer pricing so they can negotiate effectively, they turn to Edmunds.com. The Santa Monica, Calif., company’s websites, which include the automotive enthusiast’s Inside Line, provide a helpful range of resources, including consumer reviews, information on ownership costs, online loan calculators, fuel economy guides and insider blogs and podcasts.
As the leading provider of automotive information in the U.S, Edmunds.com is continually expanding its services. It recently launched CarSpace, the rapidly growing social networking site, and introduced interactive vehicle tours using innovative multimedia technology. Another service, Edmunds2Go, delivers pricing, summary reviews and dealer locator information via cell phones and PDA’s.
Seeking an all-terrain infrastructure
The mission of Edmunds’ IT infrastructure is to support its business operations, service its website and B2B customers, and to provide a hosting platform for its Internet properties. After years of outsourcing to a managed hosting firm, Edmunds.com deployed a new IT environment in early 2006, powered exclusively by Dell PowerEdge servers.
As both a data and media business that has to support office needs with Active Directory, Exchange and desktop management applications while running high-volume websites with vast databases and multimedia technology, Edmunds needed reliable hardware that could flexibly scale out as the company grew and responded to changing market conditions.
“In overhauling our infrastructure, we carefully evaluated potential vendors,” says Barak Moffitt, Edmunds’ executive director of Production Operations. “We needed a technology provider that could enable us to support the exponential growth we have had over the past eight years with a minimum of maintenance, overhead, people and processes. Dell servers delivered the excellent TCO and price-performance we needed to scale out with our business.”
Edmunds.com is using hundreds of rack-mounted Dell PowerEdge servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support its many business operations. PowerEdge 1850 servers support infrastructure services, such as authentication and registration, while the robust PowerEdge 6850 servers host website operations. PowerEdge 2850 and the newly introduced PowerEdge 2950 servers running Oracle10g RAC support Edmunds’ Business to Business services, which supply information to the automotive industry, analysts, banks and the press.
No time for pit stops in a 24x7 business
Edmunds made high availability a priority as it designed its Impact Management System (IMS), an IT environment that can withstand the recurring demands of heavy use. When a hardware component experiences unusual impact, such as reaching full capacity or failing, the system centrally assigns a new server to pick up the slack in a matter of minutes.
“IT is a strategic asset for Edmunds in generating revenue and minimizing time to market for the business, so it’s critical that we deploy the right technology to meet our business drivers,” says Edmunds' Moffitt. “Dell PowerEdge servers enable us to scale out better, perform better and deliver the high availability we require.”
To simplify IT operations, Edmunds uses Dell’s Remote Access Controller (DRAC) and OpenManage products to centrally manage diverse business functions, from administration to Website activities. These open, flexible tools enable Edmunds to integrate, standardize and automate its server management processes, while providing access to PowerEdge servers from virtually any location. Centralized management and remote access mean fewer administrators for a given number of servers.
In its development environment, Edmunds is using VMware virtualization solutions supporting development, integration, qualification and user acceptance testing. The Dell and VMware partnership has enabled Edmunds to take advantage of the benefits of a large test and development infrastructure without the expense of building one. Based on the success of this program, Edmunds is now testing virtualization for eventual use in its production environment.
“We’ve seen tremendous progress in the performance and stability of virtualized environments and anticipate using this technology more extensively in the near future,” Moffitt says. “Virtualization reduces the time to deploy new technology and services, thereby enabling IT to better support the business.”
No licenses needed
Edmunds is taking advantage of the Dell servers’ standards-based architecture by deploying open source applications to run authentication and administrative processes, including its LDAP protocols, which allow client programs to talk to servers. Edmunds also purchased Red Hat support for its Linux environment, including managing software builds and providing automated satellite system provisioning, to get the best of both worlds—a license-free environment complemented by high-quality service.
“We’re not quite at the point where we’re leveraging open source for our revenue-generating services, but eliminating licensing costs is an effective way to rein in TCO, so we’re taking baby steps where we can,” Moffitt notes. “Open source solutions can be flexible and extremely efficient, but we never deploy an application that hasn’t been proven in the real world.”
Great design – not just for automobiles
As inconsequential as it might sound, another advantage of Dell PowerEdge servers is the consistency of its cabling and panel design. Efficient, clean design facilitates airflow and cooling, reducing power consumption. “Our data center is certainly the cleanest looking and operating one that I’ve ever seen, thanks in large part to Dell’s consistency of design,” Moffitt says. “The simplified cable management makes adding and replacing hardware easy, enabling us to keep our staff lean.”
As Edmunds looks to the future, it anticipates enhancing its business intelligence capabilities and using virtualization to deploy new technologies on demand. To meet these needs, Edmunds will continue to scale out with Dell PowerEdge servers. “Dell has its eye on delivering more price-performance value by adopting Opteron multicore technology,” says Moffitt.
Looking for the checkered flag
Earlier this year, Keynote Systems, which measures Internet performance, ranked the Edmunds.com website Number 2 in the automotive industry for reliability, availability and performance. “That was before the migration was completed,” Moffitt points out. “By early next year I expect we will be Number 1, no doubt about it.”
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