NDB cluster telecom database. (Data News and Products).

The quantity of data that needs to he handled in telecom networks and related applications is expanding exponentially, driven by growth in areas such as always-on services, prepayment, content-rich applications, messaging, portals, roaming and location-based services. Large, powerful databases are needed to process this data very rapidly and ensure the user experience of these new services meets expectations created by decades of reliable telephony. The NDB (Network Database) Cluster database server--developed by Ericsson, available from Alzato--was designed to meet this requirement.

Having developed the real-time parallel in-memory database technology to be found in NDB Cluster for its own network infrastructure platforms, Ericsson saw an opportunity for the technology to be commercialized, marketed and further developed for new applications outside the company and formed Alzato in 2001 to take on this role.

NDB Cluster was specifically developed to combine the performance characteristics of real-time in-memory databases, with the traditional availability and scalability of telecom systems.

NDB Cluster uses a patented parallel, distributed database architecture, in which data is fragmented and replicated across a number of nodes. This provides sufficient processing power--proven in benchmark tests carried out by Sun--to handle a record 1.5 million transactions per second, and to commit synchronously replicated updates at a rate of nearly 300,000 per second.

The architecture also provides 99.999 per cent availability (less than 5 minutes' downtime per year), and has the capability to offer availability of 99.9999 per cent (less than 30 seconds' downtime per year) with the forthcoming implementation of a number of strategic patents. In the event of a single node failure, replica data is instantly available (with a switch-over time of less than 10ms). Equipment can be upgraded or replaced in service without interruption.

The parallel architecture of NDB Cluster provides near-linear scalability, meaning that adding processing capacity provides an equivalent scale increase in performance. The solution can run on everything from low-end Unix workstations, through dusters of PCs to high-end SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing, or `shared everything') machines.

With its very thin, operating system-specific `portability layer', NDB Cluster can be rapidly ported across different operating systems (current ports include Solaris, Linux, OSE Delta and Windows). Unlike traditional IT systems, NDB Cluster has been programmed in an asynchronous, manner, which essentially means that processing requests and responses are not handled sequentiafly--speeding up overall performance considerably.

Alzato is focusing on the telecom industry, where there is a pressing need for high-performance yet cost-effective database solutions in areas such as core network switching and routing, session management, network management, billing and mediation.

www.ericsson.com