Legacy Oracle Applications

Business challenge

The enterprise customer had 19 custom-written Oracle Applications dependent on Oracle Database 10. There were several performance issues due to out-of-support hardware. A bare-metal recovery was not possible because the media needed for reinstallation was missing. Software licensing costs were increasing year over year.

Solution

The solution required the application of Six Degrees Consulting’s cloud infrastructure expertise. SDC’s partnership with Oracle and intimate knowledge of its products was also crucial to a successful solution.

New hardware was set up leveraging Solaris 11 and OVM LDoms. Solaris 10 Branded Zones were used to support the legacy applications.

The need for application reinstallation was bypassed by implementing a physical-to-virtual conversion of all the old servers. The use of virtual servers made it easy to move the applications and database. Everything could then run in Solaris 10 on modern hardware, allowing storage to be centralized. Additionally, all the benefits of Solaris 11 (performance, features, and fault tolerance) could be realized for the applications and database within the Solaris 10 guest zone. Hardware failure now results in a crash-consistent reboot. A nice feature of the consolidation is that it allows multiple isolated zones to share the same CPU license pool, decreasing license requirements.

The system is now easy to backup and recover remotely. All operating systems and zones are centrally stored, which provides the capability for effortless snapshots and replication.

Solutions, services, and products applied

Cloud infrastructure: Oracle

SDC: enterprise security, data center security, policy optimization, Oracle VM Manager