As existing hardware was close to end-of-life, Vincent Arnal CIO of Lalux needed to consider the best options for running 40+ Oracle Databases. Their big challenges and opportunities were cybersecurity and industry standard regulations. “We were dealing with Solvency 2, Cloud Guidelines IT Governance, GDPR, and more. Staying compliant with these rules consume an important part of the budget and workload at the expense of innovation projects. However, a generation of new technology, especially around data represents to Lalux a huge opportunity as an innovation enabler.”
As Lalux was considering a database infrastructure refresh, they considered three scenarios:
- Generic SAN
- Exadata Cloud@Customer
- HyperConverged Infrastructure
During the evaluation, they leaned towards an alternative to just replace the SAN with a new generation. Gen 2 Exadata Cloud@Customer provided a full appliance owned and managed by Oracle but hosted in Lalux data center.
Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations Frank Brandenburger discussed the key drivers for their decision to choose Oracle. “Most important, we wanted to modernize our IT infrastructure and enhance service for our strategic applications.” Pushing dataset automation and orchestration of workloads was also an important driver, as well as facilitating storage administration by reducing operational complexity. They also desired increased flexibility in terms of storage and CPU provisioning. “For example, our database servers showed only 19% compute utilization on average, but without possible bursting to handle peaks.” Lalux needed a better solution for monitoring and optimizing resource consumption. They also wanted to discontinue the assembly of a self-made database platform consisting of building blocks from many different vendors. And finally, to respect local and international regulatory compliance constraints, a private cloud platform turned out to be the logical choice.
How is Exadata Cloud@Customer helping Lalux? The unique architecture of Exadata makes it the fastest and most highly available solution for running Oracle Databases, including technologies like RAC, Automatic Storage Management, Storage Offload, and Recovery Manager. From a storage point of view, the proposed solution, which consists of two 1/4 configurations, offered enough capacity to support Lalux’s growth and new projects for the next 5 years. Frank mentions “From a compute point of view it provided us with enough capacity to handle peaks more than 6x higher. Especially when it comes to executing CPU intensive jobs. With a memory of 720 GB per compute node generous SGA configurations are straightforward.” Exadata Cloud@Customer includes a lot of database features at no additional cost. Such as Partitioning, Advanced Compression, Advanced Security, Real Application Testing, Active DataGuard, Management Packs, and many more. “This fact is a real game-changer because it enables new ways of designing IT solutions. The entire infrastructure, as Vincent mentioned already, storage and compute is fully managed by Oracle, freeing up time and resources, which help us use our staff’s skills for added value tasks.”
Another very important fact was related to Oracle’s licensing schema particularly when using non-Oracle virtualization software. In this context, Exadata Cloud@Customer was a safe choice. Exadata is Oracle’s strategic database platform for all Oracle Database workloads on-premises or in the cloud, which Lalux found very reassuring and the results speak for themselves. “The Exadata Cloud@Customer environment has been 100% stable and reliable. The batch performance was better for almost all jobs, up to 3x better for jobs using some PLSQL program units. Concerning OLTP performance – improved for almost all transactions and up to 2x better for some transactions”. Another important improvement was a complete database refresh with databases of more than 2 TB which are now 2x faster. “Last, but not least, with regards to the financial perspective, we did not overrun our Universal Credits budget.”
The ongoing migration is a collaborative effort of Oracle Consulting and Lalux DBAs. Project management is executed under the responsibility of Oracle Consulting. “Everything went smoothly and the first project phases have been delivered on time and within the respect of the project plan.” Frank highly recommends doing a pre-study with Oracle Consulting covering topics like an analysis of the existing environment, the definition of the target architecture, and the elaboration of an outlined high-level migration plan. “Of course, you should develop a solid business case including all important factors, like existing and new license needs, Oracle Database support costs, storage and compute costs, and administration costs.” Exadata Cloud@Customer implicates a consumption-based model involving OCPUs, which are a cloud infrastructure measure for computing and what is called annual universal credits which are billed in advance with a 12-month minimum and debited monthly based on the actual usage. “So very important to know your workloads!”
Any recommendations to other organizations considering a move to the cloud? “It is very important to identify which workloads can benefit from a cloud migration” Today there are many technology offerings and competing products for cloud architecture. Also, important to consider is to use the right partner for deployment and consulting help. “And in the end, if you have a private or hybrid cloud enterprise strategy, and if you are running Oracle Databases, then I would recommend considering Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer as a possible answer.”
LA LUXEMBOURGEOISE group currently employs more than 400 staff in the Grand Duchy. The country has one of the country’s largest networks, with more than 1000 agents including 120 professionals across the country.
To learn more: Visit Exadata Cloud@Customer
Vincent Arnal, Head of IT Department (CIO)
Vincent joined Lalux in 2011 as CIO after more than 10 years in Management Consulting in the Insurance Sector. He defined and implemented the whole modernization of Lalux Group IT environment including DKV Luxembourg acquisition.
Frank Brandenburger, Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations
Frank joined Lalux in 1989 as a developer and system administrator. He helped the company modernizing its IT infrastructures by transforming a mainframe environment into cloud computing platforms.