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Learn Rochester Electronics’ measures to lengthen the life of its critical applications and preserve legacy IP for semiconductor replication.
Rochester Electronics had dated hardware that needed replacement without affecting legacy intellectual property from out-of-date SPARC servers in its semiconductor business.
Working with Rochester’s DT team, Stromasys used Charon-SSP to create virtualized SPARC systems while keeping their Solaris 2.5.1 OS settings, including kernel options, intact.
Aging data centers often rely on legacy technology. When applications require continued use beyond the life of their hardware, virtualizing legacy servers can preserve investments. With the right software bridge, companies can remove the old hardware hosts, and replace their servers with modern infrastructure. The crucial element is software designed to emulate the legacy system. For Rochester Electronics, Stromasys’ Charon virtualization software made that replacement possible, affordable, and efficient.
The Design Technology team at Rochester used Stromasys’ Charon-SSP to move their circa 1996 Sun SPARC servers out of its data center. The native hardware from Sun is obsolete, and the servers are no longer supported by any manufacturer. However, the legacy SPARC applications still drive valuable intellectual property (IP), which was at risk of being lost, due to the aging hardware and an inability to repair the Sun systems.
Rochester is the world’s largest continuous source of semiconductors. The company focuses on providing semiconductor lifecycle management. Semiconductor devices that are end-of-life (EOL) or obsolete still have critical applications in industries where support for long product lifecycles is essential. Rochester provides continued licensed manufacturing and product replication to support its customers where changing system software in long-life systems is not an option.
Rochester relies on legacy IP to support customers with the challenges of semiconductor obsolescence, as part of a fully authorized semiconductor replication process. Preserving IP was crucial.
Stromasys is an original and leading provider of enterprise-class cross-platform virtualization solutions. Their experts worked alongside Rochester’s Design Technology staff to deploy Charon SSP for SPARC virtualization. Charon-SSP allowed off-the-shelf Intel-based hardware to operate the virtualized SPARC system and permitted the Sun hardware to leave the data center.
The Charon-SSP software merged the commands of the legacy Solaris application with the technologies of current, modern systems. The Stromasys and Rochester teams were able to preserve the operating system, application, and design data. This preservation meant no software rework was necessary, or translation of commands and data. Original operating systems settings (Solaris 2.5.1), including kernel options, were kept intact.
Charon-SSP is part of the Stromasys’ Charon hardware virtualization product family. The SSP version of the software creates a virtual replica of the original SPARC hardware inside a standard x86-compatible computer system. At Rochester and elsewhere, Charon allows for the continuous use of legacy applications, extending the life of legacy hardware.
For Rochester, the overall performance of the emulated system has been enhanced. CPU intensive tasks that would have taken hours, can now be executed in minutes. Disk performance has increased since it is no longer reliant on SCSI disks that spin at low speeds. By using modern hardware at modern networking speeds, network and other IO performance has accelerated as well.
Rochester Electronics’ mission-critical applications have an extended life today through Charon’s virtualization, modernization, and system enhancements. Rochester’s legacy design system, powered by Charon-SSP, creates one of many solutions available to Rochester customers as part of their semiconductor lifecycle solution.
