Ranked as one of the world’s top 100 universities, McMaster University is a research-focused student-centered institution dedicated to creating a brighter world through the art and science of discovery. As McMaster continues to grow, they lean heavily on their reputation for research, and student-centered, experiential education to help make their university attractive. “We need to make sure our students are successful and provide them with the best experience possible. Keeping up with student requirements from a technology perspective is challenging as it is constantly changing. We had to become more agile and responsive and Exadata Cloud@Customer has allowed us to become that – by using cloud features.”
In 2017, leading the project to modernize McMaster’s infrastructure and to replace X86 on-premises systems, Director of Enterprise Applications and Data Systems Kevin de Kock was looking to refresh multiple servers hosting Oracle Databases. “Three years ago, there was a lot of concern about security and data sovereignty in the public cloud. Exadata Cloud@Customer was the perfect solution because it provides cloud functionality while hosting on-premises, with a low-risk path to the cloud.”
The university opens systems for registration in June for two weeks and this is the busiest time to hand out appointments for students. That’s where the loads’ spike on the machines and as it is monitored throughout that time, they were able to anticipate when a spike is coming and add resources when required. “The ability to scale up or down is great for the campus lifecycle calendar.”
When McMaster started this project, they had over 175 databases, they now have about 75 databases. “This wasn’t just a lift and shift but consolidation that was a transformational opportunity. We always wanted a hybrid model with compute capacity on-premises with a seamless move to the cloud.” Exadata Cloud@Customer was key in spreading the work across departments and sharing the load. “It helped to accelerate thinking about cloud services and trust cloud services are maturing and secure.”
Previously, if an Admin or Tech Support wanted to test a new feature in PeopleSoft, for example, a copy of the environment could take up to five to ten days to fire up a database, and/or virtual machine with different hand-offs from people that own the applications and databases. Now with Exadata Cloud@Customer, they have copies of the environments within hours. McMaster University realized an 80 percent time savings in database provisioning which allowed them to be more efficient and free up time for their database admins because they could respond more quickly to new challenges. Now a DBAs time is not being consumed by spinning up databases and tearing them down, instead, it has reinvigorated personnel to spend time for new projects and be more agile and responsive.
“Exadata Cloud@Customer allows us to take full advantage of Oracle PeopleSofts Selective Adoption methodology by provisioning environments on demand to extract and implement new features and functionality. A prime example of this was the requirement for students to have the ability to request a deferral to keep their acceptance offer valid for one year due to COVID-19. In the past this may have required a customization but with the seamless integration and cloud automation between Exadata Cloud@Customer and PeopleSoft we are able to download the latest image, extract the delivered functionality, test and schedule implementation within days.” Other results included end-to-end refresh improved from 10 hours to 1.5 hours and HR backup is now done in 7 minutes instead of 1 hour. ETLs are 25% faster and scheduled query runtimes improved by 70%.
McMaster University is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It operates six academic faculties with over 27,000 undergraduate and over 4,000 post-graduate students. “We cannot wait to move to Oracle Autonomous Database features. We constantly are looking for ways to evolve and we are comfortable on the leading edge and not afraid to try new things.”
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Kevin de Kock is Director of Enterprise Solutions and Applications at McMaster University. He has 40+ years systems experience in multiple roles, including operations, development, database administration, analysis and design, project management, senior management and strategy. Kevin is a graduate of McMaster University with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Economics. In addition, he has diverse business exposure spanning retail, manufacturing, financial services, non-profit, social media and processed and packaged goods.