Oklahoma Department of Human Services Child Welfare Database Migration

Or

How to Drive Oneself Crazy and Still Have Fun

The KIDS System as of Autumn 2000 Powerbuilder thick client with Oracle backend HP9000 T Mhz PA-RISC 7100 CPUs Hard drives at the end of support life SCSI attached RAID HP-UX Oracle Supports 600+ users Token Ring

The Original Plan Upgrade hardware to modern HP hardware Dual processor PA-RISC 8500 Failover system (MC/Serviceguard) Fibre attached SAN (va7100) Bonded 100mb ethernet

HP Positives Uptime measured at % Increased disk throughput Increased processing capacity 64 bit operating system

HP Negatives Expensive support Idle CPU cycles Multiple hardware platforms Multiple DASD platforms

An Unrelated Project? It’s time to upgrade that ole mainframe thing-a-majig

IBM Makes a Proposal Shhhh! Chris likes it!

Linux?

IBM’s Proposal Apply money allocated to KIDS upgrade to z/900 purchase Purchase two IFL’s for z/VM and Linux Offer a lot of help

IBM Positives Consolidation of hardware Single source for support Hardware reliability Utilize existing storage infrastructure z/VM allows for better resource management Leverage tight pocketbook

IBM Negatives Oracle RDBMS not yet available for production Linux relatively unproven in mission critical environments No failover capability Scalability concerns Management uneducated about Linux

The Decision...

Is Linux

Issues encountered Database corruption 2000/4000 character field 31 bit 2 gigabyte limit Online backup solution Sysadmin education User education Management education

Positives encountered Oracle is Oracle Applicability of existing Unix knowledge Linux is configured more securely Management becomes more open to Linux solutions Fundamental changes in recovery and security concepts

Two years later...

Final migration scheduled for April 10, 2004

After the Migration z/VM 4.4 Oracle 10g Availability –RAC –Response