CBOSS Hardware Platform

The CBOSS hardware platform, based on Sun Fire RISC servers from Sun Microsystems as well as on HP 9000 and Alpha servers from Hewlett-Packard, meets the stringent requirements of telecom companies. Steady evolution of supreme quality services underlies the ever-lasting battle for new customers. Continuous growth of the subscriber base, increasing customer demands for the functionality and reliability of CBOSS solutions require an increasingly powerful hardware platform.

The product line of RISC server manufacturers is distinguished by an elaborate hardware and software expansion policy, which is critical for telecom companies dealing with ever-increasing subscriber bases. An important role is also attributed to hardware reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS). Reliability is characterized by the data channels control and failure recovery system, redundancy of fault-tolerant power supply, system state and environment monitors, as well as enhanced-reliability cables and connectors. High availability is ensured by redundancy of the basic system components (CPUs, controllers, address buses, power supplies, cooling systems, and I/O subsystems). Serviceability combines such features as modular system design, diagnosis and self-control systems, hot replacement of critical system nodes and components, and dynamic reconfiguration capabilities.

To optimize the scalability, flexibility, performance, and integration into the current telco’s infrastructure, RISC-servers from Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard have balanced system design. By committing to a seamless, smooth upgrade they provide excellent protection of your investment in the CBOSS hardware platform.

Servers

Sun Microsystems offers its enterprise-class family of servers to enable smooth upgrade along the model line. The key Sun Fire system components such as CPU, memory modules, I/O, and uniboard CPU/memory boards are interchangeable across the Sun Fire server family and can be provided to adapt to your changing application requirements. Sun Microsystems offers three families of RISC servers customized to the specific tasks of a telecom company, namely entry-level (SF V120, SF V240, SF V440), mid-range (SF V490, SF V890, SF E2900, SF E4900, SF E6900), and the true flagships of the Sun Microsystems product line, hi-end servers (SF E20K, SF E25K). To middle-scale and large telecom companies CBOSS offers the following line of Sun Fire servers from Sun Microsystems.

Sun Fire E6900
The Sun Fire E6900 server is the most outstanding representative of the midframe & midrange family of Sun servers available from CBOSS. Based on 64-bit multithread two-core UltraSPARC IV processors, the Sun Fire E6900 server is a powerful and highly reliable solution for mission-critical data center applications. Full hardware redundancy, Dynamic System Domains and a variety of advanced mainframe-class availability features, such as hot CPU upgrades and Dynamic Reconfiguration, provide maximum uptime and availability. We recommend the Sun Fire E6900 to customers who seek outstanding scalability, continuous uptime and impressive total system performance.

CBOSS offers its customers solutions deployed on RISC servers from Hewlett-Packard, another prominent global manufacturer. Customers can currently choose either AlphaServer or PA-RISC systems as a hardware platform. Hewlett-Packard offers a wide range of servers providing a choice of server architecture that meets customer requirements for performance and scalability. Entry-level servers have proven symmetrical multiprocessing architecture (SMP). Mid-range and high-end servers, such as Superdome, rp8420-32, rp7420-16 are designed around a cell-based crossbar architecture. The CBOSS hardware platform uses the following line of servers from Hewlett-Packard:

Typical Hardware Platform based on Hewlett-Packard Servers
Subscriber base	20-100 ths.	100-500 ths.	0,5-2M	over 2M
Server	rp4410-4	rp7420-16	rp8420-32	Superdome
Number of processors/type	1-4 PA-8900	2-8 PA-8900	2-16 PA-8900	2-64 PA-8900
RAM	4-8 GB	8-32 GB	32-128 GB	up to 1 TB

Hewlett-Packard rp8420-32
The feature-rich HP Server rp8420-32 represents a quantum leap in midrange UNIX computing. The HP rp8420-32 provides leading performance and high-end server technologies to handle today's mission-critical applications. The rp8420-32 offers leading high-availability features to ensure uncompromising dependability and unprecedented investment protection through in-box upgrades. Support and service available for multithread PA-8900-based processors include smart set integration and implementation as well as a wide range of support services. The rp8420-32 also offers high-end partitioning capabilities to meet your business needs. And the rp8420-32 does it all in a package less than half the size of comparable servers, providing unsurpassed efficiency which results in lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

HP rp8420-32 Specifications
Number of physical processors PA-8900 (1.0 GHz, 1.1 GHz) or PA-8800 (900 MHz, 1.0 GHz)	2-16
Number of logical processors	4-32
RAM	up to 256 GB
I/O	32 PCI slots
Hardware partitions (nPars)	up to 4
Virtual partitions (vPars)	up to 32

Storage

Following the suite of server solutions, the standards for storage infrastructure availability, performance, scalability, and manageability continue to rise. This is especially true for the fast-paced telecom market. A modern storage system goes far beyond disk array connected to the server. A storage infrastructure features high-level data access, high availability, data protection and failure recovery, resource utilization monitoring, flexible storage management, automatic backup and transparent recovery facilities. CBOSS Corporation provides a solution to storage challenges, offering systems from globally-renowned manufacturers such as Sun Microsystems, Hitachi Data Systems, and Hewlett Packard.

Sun StorEdge 9990
To large, fast-growing customers CBOSS offers high-end Sun Microsystems storage systems, featuring the highest availability and scalability. High performance achieved due to second-generation switched architecture, naturally combines exceptional RAS with intuitive management as well as ease of support. The second generation switched architecture ensures fast I/O, high bandwidth, and positive scaling. Compared to earlier disk array models, the Sun StorEdge 9990 features a number of undisputed benefits, one of which is the aggregated bandwidth of 18 GBps! The internal disk array architecture can support any applications including the heavy ones with intensive I/O. The architecture is based on the switched Hi-Star (Hierarchical Star Network) which provides multiple redundant non-locked data channels between the I/O subsystem, cache memory, and disk subsystem.

HDS Thunder 9585V
The mid-range Thunder 9580V from Hitachi Data Systems is a flagship of the Thunder 9500V series modular storage systems. It consolidates the latest developments and cutting-edge modular storage technologies. The hardware has the following specifications:
– Max raw storage – up to 129 TB
– Max number of expansion modules – up to 30
– Max Disks– 5-449 (FC 73, 146, 300 GB or SATA 250, 400 GB)
– Max cache memory – 2-8 GB
– RAID levels – 0, 1, 1+0, 5
To enhance the availability, the Thunder 9585V applies redundant power supply and mirrored cache memory and allows updating the firmware without affecting the performance. The storage system implements the capabilities of adding and replacing disk modules and cache memory in the hot mode as well as automatic data recovery and automatic disconnection of malfunctioning components. The Thunder 9585V can be efficiently applied in open SAN architectures and act as a key component in building fault-tolerant solutions within hardware and software solutions of telecom companies.

Enterprise Virtual Array 8000
The EVA8000 ensures efficient use of disk space, high scalability of its capacity and performance, and the capability of uninterrupted system capacity upgrade. It enables creation of instant copies of logical volumes, as well as replicating volumes of remote systems.
Due to the support of virtualization, automation and remote control technologies the EVA8000 allows a system administrator to avoid complicated routine operations typical when operating a ‘classical’ RAID. These not only save customer time and money but also enhance the reliability of the entire system by minimizing operator’s errors, and, by considerably speeding up and facilitating the process of a telco’s information system adaptation to ever-changing business requirements, and hence to changes in capacity and load distribution, implementation of additional servers and new applications. This all ensures a smooth transition to new conditions without interrupting normal business processes.
The built-in software of EVA8000 controllers implements a self-tuning and self-repair system concept, which, along with EVA’s modular design, allows you to easily and promptly adapt the array’s parameters, including its capacity and performance, to the requirements faced without servers and applications’ shutdown.

Tape Backup and Recovery

Protection of mission-critical data is an important element in building a data continuance environment. Volumes of information stored on enterprise servers sky-rocket and amount to dozens of gigabytes even for medium-scale companies. Multi-level RAID and mirroring ensure data protection from hardware faults in storage systems, while effective backup, archive, and failure recovery solutions allow protection of your data from user errors, application malfunctions and possible failures. Backup and recovery is one of the prerequisites for providing business continuity.

The importance of data backup is quite often underestimated at any company’s top management level. Without regular backup, failures, no matter how rare, threatening one's stored data, bring disruption to critical business operations. The loss or corruption of data leads to unaffordable delays, financial expenses, and heavy damages to corporate image. Specific research done proves that over 40% of companies that suffered irrecoverable loss of corporate data failed to continue their business.

Sun StorEdge L500
Hewlett-Packard StorageWorks EML 245e
CBOSS offers a wide range of backup and recovery solutions based on Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard product families, providing our customers with an efficient, reliable and cost-effective way to back up and protect enterprise data. A large volume backup system can, for example, be based on the StorEdge L500 tape library from Sun Microsystems or the StrorageWorks EML 245e from Hewlett-Packard. The modular design accommodates storage growth and rapid recovery. The support of various types and amounts of tape drives, as well as operation in high-bandwidth storage area networks [SAN], allow individual capacity and throughput requirements to be met.

Specifications of StorageWorks EML 245e
Drive type	LTO Ultrium460, LTO Ultrium960
Number of drives	1-16
Native cartridge capacity	200 GB
Max native capacity	88,4 TB
Max native throughput	4.6 Tbyte/hr

Bill Printing

Bill preparation and printing is one of the most time- and resource-consuming processes of monthly billing procedures and should not be underestimated. In this context, a challenging goal for any telco is timely payment collection and largely depends on how promptly a billing statement is delivered to a customer and how reliable the printing system is.

The Xerox VIPP (Variable Data Intelligent PostScript PrintWare) technology enables customers to preset complex dynamic bill templates and save them directly in the printer storage. An XGF stream contains only variable data embedded in the template during the imaging process. This approach yields significant advantages to an enterprise with a developed branch network and the single billing center. A transfer of prepared bills across a distributed printing system imposes new requirements on network bandwidth. The advanced XGF concept ensures files are 10 times smaller compared to the traditional PCL format.

The recommended monthly printing volume and performance is an important resource of a printing system. For a telecom company with 50,000 subscribers it amounts to 1,000,000 pages.

DocuPrint powerful production systems meet industry requirements and smoothly integrate with CBOSS billing, providing optimal quality and performance of the solution in general.