Who Hit The Turbo Button? February 13, 2013 Presenter: Stephen Watson ITS System Manager Stephen F. Austin State University

Stephen Watson Systems Manager ITS Previous jobs at SFASU (Programmer Analyst in Student/HR/Budget) (Systems Programmer I and II) 18 Years at SFASU Gabriel Nguyen Sr. Sales Consultant Oracle Corporation

Agenda How SFA went from sluggish to turbo performance...  Introduction  Challenges  Architecture Selection Process  Exadata Implementation Process  Performance Results  Where We Are Today  Q and A

Stephen F. Austin State University  Academic and Research University  Undergraduate, Graduate and Doctoral  Enrollment of 13,000  Both Traditional and Online Courses

SFA Support Staff  3 DBA’s  7 Systems  11 Programming

Current Environment  Ellucian Banner 8  Student  Human Resources  Finance  Financial Aid  WebFOCUS Reporting  UC4 AppManager  Oracle 11g R2 DB and 11gR2 WLS/FMW

Why Did We Need A New DB Platform?  Registration Performance Issues  Future DB Platform Support from Oracle and Ellucian

Problem 1: Registration Performance  2008 Banner 8 Go-Live  Registration load issues during orientations and pre-registration periods  Limited to simultaneous users  Had to break registration in very small groups (<500) Student Experience Impact

Problem 1: Registration Performance  University reputation (bad press, social media…)  Student satisfaction declined  Negatively impacted enrollment  Negative comments from parents about experience Peripheral Impact

Making the News

Problem 2: Product End of Life  HP de-support Open VMS  Ellucian de-support of Open VMS  Oracle de-support of Itanium platform  HPUX/11G would be de-supported soon soon as well Technology Impact

Environment Before Exadata  HP Itanium rx6600 Running Open VMS 8.3 and Oracle 10G R2 (3 identical servers)  Banner Production on one server  Banner Test instances (4) on second server  Banner Prod DR on third server, ready to come up when needed  No high-availability, data protection, or disaster recovery capabilities

Hardware Refresh Time  We could run HPUX/11G on the servers but this would be de-supported soon as well  After getting another year from the hardware we would have to buy new hardware

Why we selected Exadata  Investigation and research  Oracle EX-CITE conducted on campus  Key advantages  Fast transaction processing  Extreme performance and redundant appliance type architecture  One throat to choke (so to speak)  One process to patch everything (OS, switches, storage and database homes)  Lots of storage capacity and processing power for future growth

What is Exadata?  Oracle’s Engineered Database Machine  Pre-configured, pre-integrated and highly efficient combination of hardware and software to provide a complete solution to the customer  Optimized for OLTP and DW database workloads  The Exadata Quarter “Server” or Rack contains  Multiple database nodes (2)  Multiple Cell or storage servers (3)  Shared storage (12 3 TB disk per cell )  All connected with a fast Infinband network (40 GB/sec)  Designed to work as a unit to increase transaction performance  Lots of RAID redundant storage. (108 TB raw )  ASR Server monitors hardware failures continually

Solution: SFA Exadata Platform X2-2 Quarter Rack 2 Sun Fire x4170 DB Servers 3 Exadata Storage Servers (SAS) Raw Disk – 108TB (SAS Drives) Raw Flash – 1.2TB User Data – 40TB ( No Compression) ZFS Backup Area – 20 TB Prod X2-2 Quarter Rack DR/Dev/Test/QA X2-2 Quarter Rack Active Data Guard (physical standby) 10g to 11g migration RAC 3 databases, 6 Instances 700 GB size Stand-by PROD databases 5 databases, 10 Instances 3.0 TB size OEM Grid Control Grid Control Console GigE Backup Network ZFS Storage Appliance Backups of database Export dumps Data Center A – Site 1Data Center B – Site 2

Bottom Line  SFA needed a solution that “just works”  SFA enrollment growing – need a solution that will keep up with demands of administration and students  Opportunity for IT consolidation to lower costs  Avoid further loss of confidence from faculty/staff in our IT management and staff

Bottom Line  Loss of confidence from the students in SFA being able to deliver on their mission promise: “...comprehensive institution dedicated to excellence in teaching, research, scholarship, creative work, and service”  To effectively recruit quality students in the future and confidence from parents in SFA being the right university for their family members

Project Timeline A very rapid deployment DB Export Started on 4/5/2012 at 5:00 pm DB import into Exadata Completed 4/7/2012 Testing and Data Validation 4/7 thru 4/8/2012 Go live Sunday 4/8/2012 at 7:00 pm

Summary of Implementation  Delivery to go live one of the shortest I have ever been involved with  Lots of long hours including evenings and weekends (several hour weeks)  Oracle could not believe we implemented in this short time frame  Usual implementation of Exadata (6 months to 1 year)  Ellucian and Oracle consulting were crucial

Where we are today  2 successful large registrations, fall and spring  5 successful orientations (registration)  Returned to larger groups for registration  Classifications (about 3000 per group)  All Processes running faster  Better faculty/staff experience in Banner  Better student experience with registration

Where we are today (continued)  Administration very pleased with the success of the registration process  Strategically positioned for future IT consolidation of databases on campus  No complaints from students

Benefits  Time to Value  Return on Investment  Performance Before: Times After: Times Performance Improvement Query run time Reporting 1 to 3 minutes10 to 30 seconds6 fold increase AR Processes Other Processes 5 Min to 3 Hours5 Sec to 10 min60 fold increase Backup TimesFull Hot Backups 4 Hours Full Hot Backups 2 hours Time cut in half RegistrationLess than 200 concurrent Up to 1000 concurrent 5 Fold increase

Highlights  One Vendor for OS and DB issues  Oracle patches everything (OS, DB, Switches and Storage)  More disk space than we know what to do with  FLASH CACHE storage on disk helps performance

Highlights  Lots of room for future growth  No system tweaking - delivered for performance  Faster backups  Faster cloning

Questions? For additional information contact: Stephen Watson IT System Manager Information Technology Services