BPC Banking Technologies has successfully completed the benchmark testing of its SmartVista processing solution on HP Integrity Superdome servers using a new series of Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors.
The tests have been performed by HP and BPC professionals at HP EMEA Customer Center in Böblingen, Germany, and have shown a high level of performance and fault-tolerance of SmartVista installed on the new HP server solution. They have also proven that current SmartVista and HP users have an opportunity to migrate to this platform from previous generations of HP servers.
Keeping pace with modern challenges of the leading financial institutions and new technological trends, BPC continuously contributes to the development of its SmartVista processing solution and tests its compatibility with its partners' hardware solutions, including HP server platforms. The previous benchmark tests conducted by BPC at the German HP EMEA Customer Center demonstrated the ability of SmartVista installed on HP server families with PA-RISC processors to meet the transaction processing throughput requirements of the most demanding retail banks.
Recently, HP has taken a strategic decision to replace HP PA-RISC processors in its high-end servers with a new generation of Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors. This innovation required additional SmartVista benchmark testing to ensure its smooth migration to the new HP Intel Itanium 2-based platforms and to prove increased performance of the integrated solution.
Today's Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors considerably surpass the performance level of previous Intel generations. Itanium has broken multiple world performance records including the results shown by the HP Integrity Superdome, a high-end HP server that uses up to 64 Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors. That is why HP Integrity Superdome was chosen for SmartVista benchmarking and sizing.
The stress tests conducted at the HP EMEA Customer Center simulated a workload of 100 financial institutions, 50,000 ATMs, 400,000 POS-terminals and 1 billion cards. During the benchmarking, the following configurations of the test stand were used:
- HP Integrity Superdome (64 CPUs (128 cores) Itanium II 1.6GHz / 12M, 1TB main memory, HP-UX 11iv2)
- Disk Array HP XP24000 (512 x 146GB, 15 k rpm)
- 2 HSMs Safenet ProtectHost White PL1200
The intended workload was achieved with the use of the following servers:
- 32 HP ProLiant Blade Servers BL460c (2 x dual core Xeon 5160 3.0GHz, 8GB RAM, RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4)
- 16 HP Proliant Blade Servers BL465c (1 x dual core Opteron 2220 2.8GHz, 8GB RAM, RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4)
The tests have demonstrated high performance and fault tolerance of the SmartVista solution installed on the HP platform, with the highest record of 7000 transactions per second. It has also proven SmartVista's capability for a migration to the new HP servers which is especially important for the current HP and SmartVista customers interested in achieving higher reliability, performance and scalability of their processing solution and considerable growth of their card business volumes.
"We highly appreciate our cooperation with the leading providers of server solutions and optimize our products in line with their hardware platforms development," said Sergey Krukov, Deputy CEO, BPC. "The benchmarking tests conducted by HP and BPC professionals have proven that SmartVista can be flexibly adjusted to adapt to the changes in the IT-sphere and to provide a reliable platform to support the card business of the largest financial institutions".
"HP Integrity servers with a new generation of Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors have proven once again their ability to deliver unsurpassed performance, high scalability, simplified management and continuity of operation," said Dmitry Penyaz, BCS manager, HP Russia. "We are happy to cooperate with the BPC team, who strive to keep up with the times and to adapt their solutions to the latest industrial hardware standards."
Currently, the SmartVista product suite based on HP servers with Intel Itanium 2 processors is installed in the Moscow HP High Tech Center where representatives of financial institutions are able to assess advantages of the joint solution and to choose an optimal hardware and software configuration for their retail business development.