Mazda consolidates MDI system on Oracle Sparc T4

BANGALORE, INDIA: Mazda Motor Corporation consolidated its Digital Innovation (MDI) system on Oracle's Sparc T4-4 and T4-2 servers, running Oracle Solaris 10.

The MDI system provides technologies which span the entire process from planning and development to manufacturing new cars, including 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Product Data Management (PDM), and other IT tools.

Mazda, which purchased Sparc T4 servers in July 2012, used Oracle VM for Sparc to virtualize and consolidate its middleware and applications on 25 servers onto three Sparc T4 servers to support its production environment, application development and disaster recovery. Moreover, it reduced its MDI system from 12 racks to one.

Since both the old and the new servers were running Oracle Solaris, the migration to the new Sparc T4 servers took only two days to complete, says a release.

Using Oracle Solaris Containers, Mazda is running legacy applications in virtual machines, which allows them to run a mix of applications and take advantage of the latest Sparc T4 servers.

According to the statement from the company, Mazda achieved 50 per cent faster PDM tool response time at peak hours, 40 per cent reduction in monthly operational costs, 75 per cent lower monthly server power consumption and 90 per cent reduction in its data centre footprint.