Won approval of an Image Server Replacement project over an Andersen Consulting bid. The proposal was won by convincing management to perform a limited risk prototype, a project which tests the most risk prone areas of the implementation. Successfully designed an architecture to manage 600,000 image groupings on a mixture of magnetic disk and tape without the use of a relational database. The architecture consists of a Sun Sparc 1000 system (sextuple cpu with 500 Megabytes of memory) with 1.2 Terabytes of RAID 5 magnetic disk storage (DEC Storageworks system) and 10 Terabytes of Digital Linear Tape (ATL products 2640 tape silo, quantity two). Developed a multi-threaded image server in the C programming language. Also developed FAX3 to TIFF image conversion software, image acceptance software and Hierarchical Storage Management interfaces to Alphatronix systems management application.
System was put into production 3 months after the arrival of the hardware. Production highlights include: sub-second delivery of online images; near on-line access to all images as compared to 1/7 realized in the optical system; maintenance costs lowered to 1/6 of support for the optical system; media costs lowered to a fraction of that observed on the optical system; ability to send images to the Open Systems platform in parallel to the legacy platform during a stabilization period; ability to decommission and sell on the used market products used in the legacy system.
Analysis of a co-existence (legacy to open systems) application led to the implementation of a physical storage layout, increasing the application performance by 12%. Behavior of the Unix system indicated the existence of an overworked single drive. Implementation of RAID 0+1 increased performance and was implemented transparent to the application.