AQR Capital Deploys Server Management Software
Greenwich, Conn.-based asset management firm AQR Capital has begun using data center management software from Scalent to manage physical and virtual servers and handle failover.
Although it's not virtualization software, the Scalent Virtual Operating Environment does provide a virtual layer between operating systems and hardware that lets IT managers provision or reprovision virtual and physical servers through software, and automatically handles the storage and network adjustments such movements entail. "I can run a server on any hardware, the server persona is no longer tied to a particular piece of hardware," says Ismail Coskun, head of infrastructure and development at AQR Capital. He uses Scalent for the servers that aren't already virtualized with a hypervisor such as vmWare; typically these are high-performance, high capacity servers. For instance, some of his Red Hat Linux servers are on Scalent.
"Our investment products span a range of instruments, and all depend on high availability," Coskun says. "We couldn't afford the risk and performance penalty imposed by hypervisors in production."
Using the new technology, Coskun says he can easily move a server from one location to another, whether that's within a building or between buildings. He also no longer needs clustering software (which he considers too costly and complex) and the Scalent software automatically takes care of failover. "When a machine dies or is powered down the software will re-target the operating system somewhere else," Coskun says. "We could probably do this manually, but it would take time. Scalent does it in minutes." Two failover servers could be used to support 15 production machines, a savings of 13 servers that don't have to be bought, cooled or powered.
When this project is completed, AQR Capital will have about 100 servers running on the new software.
Unlike many smaller asset management firms that have been pushing IT out to or Saas paradigms, AQR Capital has more of a do-it-yourself philosophy. "That's how we've decided to maintain our staff," Coskun says. "We believe you have to give staff something to want to stay for other than money. We have a small group of people here that love technology, we automate as much as possible and that's been working for us for years."
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