In today’s always-on digital age, downtime is just unacceptable. Real-time fault management is mission-critical for companies that manage large-scale infrastructure systems, like power grids, telecommunications networks, and public utilities. This is where Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) delivers unparalleled value. One of our standout customers, Salam Mobile, is a telecommunications service provider in Saudi Arabia, operating as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). Unlike traditional telecom companies that own their infrastructure, Salam Mobile leases network capacity from a licensed operator to offer mobile services at competitive prices. Recently, they transformed their fault management system by deploying Oracle RAC. The result? Near-zero downtime, improved failover capabilities, and a massive leap in operational confidence.
Challenge
Salam Mobile serves 1.5 million fixed and 1.2 million mobile users, with projected growth of 25% over the next 2–3 years. To support its fault management system, the company required a database platform that delivers unmatched business continuity, high availability, and seamless scalability. Before standardizing on Oracle RAC, Salam Mobile ran a traditional single-instance Oracle Database, which exposed them to risks of single-node failures and elongated maintenance windows. As their grid expanded, fault detection latency became a liability.
Solution
A simple two-node Oracle RAC deployment provided Salam Mobile with:
✅ Continuous availability across a clustered environment
✅ Horizontal scalability to handle surges in data processing
✅ Rolling patching for zero-downtime maintenance
✅ Seamless application failover with no user disruption
✅ Enhanced performance
Using a standard Oracle RAC deployment on Oracle Linux with ASM (Automatic Storage Management), Salam ensures that their application continues without interruption even if one node is taken offline for maintenance or fails unexpectedly.
Architecture
Database: Oracle RAC 19c on Oracle Linux
Infrastructure: On-premises commodity server
Data Layer: ASM with mirrored disk groups
Results
Salam Mobile has been running on Oracle RAC for over a year and since then has achieved:
• 99.999% database uptime across their environment
• 22% faster fault resolution times, thanks to real-time access to telemetry data
• Zero unplanned outages, even during node failures and software patches
• Improved SLA performance across their utility partners
“Having highly available network operations is our top priority. Oracle RAC is instrumental in meeting our zero downtime service disruption goals by transparently providing uninterrupted application availability and zero downtime rolling maintenance.”
-Mohammed Waheed Ahmed, Senior Manager of Technology Platforms, Salam
What’s Next?
Building on the high-availability foundation of Oracle RAC, Salam Mobile is now working on extending continuous availability across sites by implementing disaster recovery with Oracle Active Data Guard.
Additional Resources