Charles Schwab has implemented a Linux-based Grid system from IBM and Red Hat to speed up scenario planning for pension portfolios.
According to a report in Linux Insider, it took 15 internal IT staffers working with a development team from IBM about a year to build the Grid system, which links IBM xSeries 330 servers running Red Hat Linux and IBM's DB2 database.
The system, which has been in deployment for about a month, currently operates across 12 Intel-based servers at the brokerage's Phoenix data centre. It will be rolled out nationwide later this year, tapping underused capacity on servers across the enterprise.
In its current configuration, the Grid is reputedly knocking days off the turnaround time of end-user requests for 'what if?' calculations during retirement planning exercices. The ultimate goal is to add other compute-intensive applications to the Grid and make the system available to individual investors over the Web.
David Dibble, executive vice president of technology services at Schwab, told Linux Insider: "We wanted to open up a new realm of high-throughput computing for Schwab's business applications. Things that were not thinkable just a year ago are now proving economical, and we're working at getting more of them into production."