Fusion Professionals help NBN improve database performance and reduce cost using Oracle Exadata

Key facts

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• 8 separate Oracle RAC clusters with 4 servers each on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)

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• Shared SAN storage layer on EMC VMAX

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• 380 databases (94 PROD, 94 DR, 192 NON PROD databases)

The story 

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At the time, NBN’s existing disparate solution had experienced three years of system and data growth; and as a consequence, it was beginning to show signs of its capacity limitations.

With NBN’s large Oracle footprint and the requirement for mixed database workloads (both OLTP and Analytics), they needed a new database platform that would support their growing business requirements.

Oracle’s Exadata platform was selected due to its ability to enable consolidation of systems, deliver high availability and performance required to run NBN’s mission-critical systems more efficiently and reduce overall infrastructure costs.

The solution​

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Oracle Exadata systems were integrated with NBN network, monitoring, backup recovery, security and disaster recovery solutions. System integration was verified via thorough system integration testing, including high availability and performance testing.

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All 380 databases were migrated without any incidents or issues, experiencing performance improvement in the range of 20-40%, while specific batch processes experienced 2-6x performance improvement.

Once all databases were migrated to the new Oracle Exadata platform, the existing Cisco UCS servers and EMC VMAX storage were repurposed and reused for application hosting. With the database workload being moved from EMC VMAX storage, this resulted in a 50% reduction in storage I/O, which significantly extended the lifetime of the EMC VMAX platform.