Nuts and Bolts: Oracle-HP rift — No worries

MUMBAI, INDIA: Sahara India, recently upgraded from Oracle Database 10g to Oracle Database 11g. To get a peek into why, how and where forth, we speak to Shailendra Singh, AGM (Assistant General Manager) - Data Center, Infrastructure & Business, Continuity Planning-Disaster Recovery, Sahara India Financial Corporation Limited (Sahara Para Banking). In this interview, he covers a cross-section of implementation, migration details as well as some changes in the industry’s own tool box.

After 10 g, why the upgrade to 11 g?

We have a data centre since last ten years and Oracle covered everything in place. We wanted to upgrade with new features but wanted to migrate with the same kind of technology.

How was the migration experience in toto? Smooth or challenging?

We have a large database so moving on to a new one was tough, specially with the limitations of time. It was a little challenging but we had planned it earlier properly. We did everything according to the pre-conceived plans.

What were the main potholes?

It was a tremendous task to accomplish with minimal downtime for migration without affecting any business process. Second, was to replace ageing EOL Sun Fire V880, V280r, V490 V60x servers and Sun Storage 6120 and 6290 systems both from primary and standby Data Centers. Then there was migration of database, application deployment and availability of system from old setup to new hardware i.e. Oracle M5K, M4K, T5140 servers and Oracle 6180 storage systems. We had to ensure complete Database consistency and also availability of services in stipulated time frame.

So, what were the lessons you picked?

Consult and take opinion from others but take own decisions based on facts figures and experience in order to be successful.

How much does the new slew of technology affect areas like database performance? What’s your view of one-stop-shop software stacks and platforms?

All the one-stop features were there on 10 g also, but they are definitely better in 11 g. Reporting, testing applications throughout the cycle, plug-and-play features, front-end to back-end connect is much better here. This upgrade will provide Sahara with a tight integration between its applications and the backend database. This will inevitably lead to better performance as both the database and the applications will talk to each other seamlessly.

What would be the major changes and benefits from 11g in comparison to the preceding version? How would it impact the applications part and usual issues about improving database performance, monitoring etc?

Oracle Technology being used by us includes Oracle Real Application Cluster 11g R2, Oracle Fusion middleware 11g including Oracle Forms and Reports and Oracle Data Guard with Oracle Data Guard Broker. Enhancement with Oracle 11g R2 as compared to previous releases would be on areas like high availability, extreme scalability and streamlined management. We can scale out applications ‘Horizontally’ and dynamically by adding nodes to live clusters and load balancing across them with Grid Plug& Play feature. With SCAN IP, there will be no change at client end for adding or removing nodes, and also complete Transparency.

As a user, what is your take on the changes happening in the industry; Like Oracle dropping support for Itanium and the way HP's equation is changing with Oracle. Would you as a user be concerned intensively if you were using HP h/w and Oracle's s/w and other platforms and database solutions?

Yes, definitely this would have been a disturbing situation for users running their infrastructure on HP Itanium-Oracle. This would raise concerns for the future support and services w.r.t their setup. However having analyzed the previous market share, HP Itanium as compared to IBM power series and Oracle-Sun SPARC series has the least share with Oracle running on it. With the changing scenario, now  Oracle has complete solutions offerings starting from Servers, Storages, database, fusion middleware to applications, security etc. This will benefit the user extremely as the entire bouquet is available from a single vendor. This will lead to further better coherence between various components (server h/w, database, application, security, etc.), their implementation, maintenance and operations at a single point of contact. Ultimately it should be a cost effective solution altogether. Oracle has the entire stack. So I don’t mind enjoying a complete solution from one vendor. If you go with other vendors, it still gives you extra solutions. So I have no worries regarding Oracle.