Oracle Migrations: A Simple Guide to Effectiveness and Cost Reduction

Transcription

1 Cost Containment Strategies for Oracle Database Users An EnterpriseDB White Paper For CIOs and IT Decision Makers EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

2 Table of Contents Overview... 3 Oracle Migration: A Powerful Cost Reduction Opportunity... 4 Immediate and Measurable Savings... 4 Framework for Oracle Interoperability and Migration... 5 Understanding Migration Risks... 7 Reducing Operational Pain & Risk... 8 Creating an Oracle Migration Game Plan... 8 Open Source Options The Power of Postgres + Oracle Compatibility EnterpriseDB's Oracle Migration Assessment Time to Value Summary About EnterpriseDB

3 Overview While many enterprises have been able to wring out significant cost savings by migrating to open source software for operating systems and middleware, there has been a reluctance to extend to the database layer due to concerns about complexity, risk and operational pain of migration. Significant cost pressures combined with recent improvements to open source-based RDBMS options are now causing more businesses to reconsider this position. Companies have long recognized the magnitude of savings potential for the database to be far greater than for other layers of the software stack. The recent trend in high profile companies making the switch to open source database options has now provided validation for their mission critical readiness. This combination of dramatic cost savings with little or no performance trade-offs has now made the opportunity quite compelling. Add to this the consistent complaints from Oracle customers about high pricing; lock-in cost increases from moving to new hardware; confusing pricing policies that make it hard to know true costs, and the situation is exacerbated even further. Indeed, the time may now be right for your business as well. PostgreSQL is widely viewed as the most capable and mature open-source RDBMS. Recent enhancements have further narrowed the gap between PostgreSQL and expensive, proprietary options such as Oracle. This paper will provide best practices for migrating Oracle applications to lower cost PostgreSQL alternatives; quantifying and mitigating associated risks; and reducing the operational pain associated with migration. Highlights: The cost savings opportunity for migrating to open source based RDBMS options is significantly greater than those already realized in the operating system and middleware layers Developing a framework for Oracle interoperability can help you determine the best migration strategy for your needs Choosing the right technology and quantifying migration difficulty factors up-front can help you identify and mitigate potential risks Developing a migration plan can help you optimize use of internal and external resources to reduce time to value and minimize pain and disruption to ongoing operations 3

4 Oracle Migration: A Powerful Cost Reduction Opportunity You ve seen this movie before your organization s use of core software technologies is increasing at a time when the costs of those technologies are also steadily rising. This pattern was initially evident with operating systems, and spurred wide-scale enterprise migration to Linux. It was also in play with web/application servers, triggering broad enterprise migration to products like JBoss and Apache Tomcat. Now the pattern has surfaced at the database tier, where usage is up sharply and, in many cases, so are license and maintenance fees. According to Gartner Group, enterprise open source database management systems are now more widely adopted than any other open source technology. Why? Because saving on database management costs can have material, immediate impacts on financial performance. The bad news for users of proprietary RDBMS products like Oracle is that database fees are unlikely to decline, so costs will increase as new database instances are deployed, or as hardware is upgraded to take advantage of advanced multi-core processors. Immediate and Measurable Savings If you re using Linux, JBoss or other open source solutions, you already know that reductions in both CAPEX and OPEX can be significant. Eliminate a product s perpetual license fee and you have an immediate CAPEX win. Obtain a product support subscription that s well below the annual maintenance fee for your proprietary product and your OPEX line will improve as well. 4

5 When applied to your data tier, open source cost savings can be compelling. For example, the graph below compares Oracle and Postgres Plus Advanced Server (PPAS) using a standard, single-server database configuration. Over five years, Oracle is about 5x more expensive than Postgres Plus Advanced Server. Apply that 5x savings factor to a percentage of your database spend even a small percentage and the dollar savings will add up quickly. Now compound those savings over an extended time horizon and you re delivering strategic financial value to your organization. Framework for Oracle Interoperability and Migration Although your operating system and middleware migrations are likely well underway, you may just now be starting down the path of database migration. Perhaps you are engaged in a broad IT cost reduction program or motivated by a planned hardware upgrade that will radically increase Oracle license costs. Whatever your motivation, having a framework for identifying which of your applications are best suited for an Oracle-compatible alternative will help you choose your best path forward. Oracle Migration Framework Edge Reporting New Core Risk/Difficulty Level Oracle interoperability. Choosing a low cost alternative database with native Oracle compatibility enables faster, easier migrations, and will enable your DBAs to continue their effectiveness with little or no retraining required. Without the need for re-training and the ability to port all or most of your database configurations directly over to your new database, risk and operational pain from migration will be dramatically reduced. Edge/Reporting databases. A popular migration starting point is to pair Oracle with a lower cost alternative database to handle task-specific workloads and non-mission critical business needs or edge databases such as reporting. Free from having to 5

6 service large scale reporting queries, your Oracle database can devote maximum resources to your transactional workloads. And free from OLTP contention, your reporting and BI systems can also run at peak throughput. If an edge application were to become unavailable, productivity of specific workgroups might drop temporarily, but the organization would continue to operate. Edge applications are a great starting point for larger migration initiatives because they allow developers to gain confidence and experience working with the chosen replacement database solution. Although the magnitude of cost savings may be significantly less, the low risk and fast implementation may make it a good way to get started. Edge/Reporting Database Profile Risk: LOW Implementation: FAST Savings: GOOD Databases supporting NEW Applications. Most IT organizations continually build new applications and sunset others. This can offer a compelling cost savings opportunity to introduce a lower cost Oracle alternative database. Not all greenfield applications are the same, though, and care must still be taken to match each application s workload to the most appropriate database management solution. This option offers higher cost savings potential, but may require more extensive implementation effort than the reporting scenario described above. Databases for New Apps Profile Risk: Moderate Implementation: VARIABLE Savings: BETTER Core database migrations. Mission critical systems run your business. If one goes down, you know it immediately, and getting it back online is a code red priority. Core applications are typically not chosen first for open source migrations due to these concerns. However, the dramatic cost savings from making the switch can be a strategic and/or competitive game-changer for many businesses, thus, driving the need for change. In today s competitive marketplace, many large corporations and government agencies are aggressively migrating core systems to open source alternatives with highly successful outcomes. 6

7 The key to mitigating risk in these migrations is to understand the complexities associated with your particular applications, and then seek assistance from experts with the right tools and experience to ensure success and rapid time to value. Migration analysis services like EnterpriseDB s Oracle Migration Assessment (a multidimensional migration analysis) can help you quickly identify levels of migration difficulty. Core Database Profile Risk: HIGH Implementation: VARIABLE Savings: HIGHEST Understanding Migration Risks Many IT leaders can quickly quantify the cost benefits of using lower TCO alternatives, but may have difficulty quantifying the non-financial benefits and associated risks of adding a new database to their technology infrastructures. How long will a migration take? How many people will be required and how much will it cost? What s the likelihood that something will go wrong once a migrated system is in production? How would a failed migration affect our business? Database migration risks typically fall into three categories: 1. Technical risks. All relational databases support SQL and, so, provide a basic level of portability. However, proprietary database products have been instrumented with a wide variety of value added features that are specifically designed to lock customers in. Examples of non-standard database features include exotic data types, stored procedure languages, referential integrity, and functions (e.g., for string manipulation, date and time conversions, etc.). These features may be seldom used, but can make it more difficult to move to an alternative option. 2. Human risks. You ve invested significantly to train your team on your core infrastructure technologies, databases included. How much retraining will be needed to bring technicians up to speed on your chosen open source based RDBMS? How much effort will developers, DBAs and operations staff need to perform competent database migrations, verify that your applications work as required using the new 7

8 database, and support those applications in production? How will end users be impacted? Will functional changes introduced during migration disrupt end user work patterns (and, so, their productivity)? 3. Operational risks. IT shops pay close attention to a variety of operational costs and risk factors, including systems testing, tuning, monitoring and management. All of these factors are in play when evaluating a database migration strategy. If a migrated system will require significant retooling of regression test suites, that needs to be known and justified in advance of a migration. If new monitoring, backup or troubleshooting procedures will be required, operations teams need to plan for those changes in advance of system re-deployment. Although the above risks may appear to be daunting, they are essentially the same issues you ve already tackled in operating system and middleware migrations. Thus your team may already have some of the experience needed for successful database migrations. Reducing Operational Pain and Risk The remainder of this paper describes how to create and implement an Oracle migration game plan. It describes how you can mitigate migration risks by using automated services such as EnterpriseDB s Oracle Migration Assessment, and discusses how to transition effectively from assessment to implementation by leveraging proven Oracle compatibility software and expertise. Controlling costs and maintaining the ability to leverage our previous technology investments were critical factors in the selection of EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server over Oracle. --Justin Codd, Senior DBA, AQA Creating an Oracle Migration Game Plan Whether you re considering a portfolio-wide migration or targeting a specific Oracle application, you re going to need tools for assessment, technology to minimize costs and risks, and expertise to mentor and assist you. Following the steps below will help you develop your own Oracle migration game plan to help ensure a rapid and successful transition. Step 1: Develop a comprehensive technical assessment of your application database(s). Your analysis should map the proprietary Oracle features and interfaces 8

9 you currently use to the equivalent functionality of your lower cost database alternative. It should identify gaps where you may need to do additional engineering work, and will allow you to assess migration feasibility for a specific application or your entire portfolio. Step 2: Choose the lowest risk applications first. Assess each of your applications with an Oracle database for its degree of difficulty and associated risk for migration. As described in the section on Oracle Migration Framework above, this will likely mean starting with edge or reporting applications or perhaps replacing an outdated application with a new one while transitioning to the lower TCO database. Step 3: Assess the migration risk factors. What are the technical, operational and human risk factors inherent in your organization? One of the most important factors that can reduce migration risk is the degree of Oracle compatibility in your low TCO Oracle alternative. It s risky, expensive and time consuming for you to implement equivalent features in an alternative database, and doing so adds no value to your organization s operating goals. The greater the compatibility between your Oracle database and your chosen alternative, the easier and less technical risk you will experience during the migration. This is also true for reducing human and operational risks as well. Greater compatibility means less re-training and change management issues with your staff, and fewer changes required in your existing testing and management routines. Step 4: Choose a good partner. Many IT organizations now consider database migration to be a core competency, gaining momentum and experience with each redeployed system. Other organizations have specific applications that need to be migrated; for them, gaining migration competence is not a priority. Regardless of where your organization is along that continuum, you need a proven migration partner with the résumé that complements your in-house capabilities. Taking advantage of available partner services will also help to lower technical risks while also maximizing your time to value by speeding up the migrations for all your available Oracle databases. 9

10 Open Source Options Many businesses struggle with the decision to move their highly sensitive databases from large proprietary software vendors to open source options. The obvious allure of open source includes huge cost savings; more rapid product innovations; direct access to the code base; and flexibility to change vendors as required. However, these benefits are counter-balanced by the associated risk, liability and performance concerns from reliance upon an open-source community rather than an established commercial software vendor. In particular, businesses with enterprise-class applications require commercial level options for 24x7 support; contractual service-level agreements; indemnification; custom engineering; security enhancements; and additional tooling for performance monitoring, management, and replication. Solving this dilemma requires finding the right balance between critical business requirements and associated trade-offs to achieve the right combination of open-source benefits along with commercial grade product and service options. EnterpriseDB provides a full range of these options along with the consulting expertise to help customers choose the solution set that best meets their needs. For customers who want to keep the flexibility of community PostgreSQL, EnterpriseDB offers training, support, engineering services, and add-on tooling. For customers requiring enterprise class features along with full product warranties, a clearly defined product strategy, and custom engineering ability. EnterpriseDB offers an enhanced version of Postgres that is built directly upon the PostgreSQL core. This product, Postgres Plus Advanced Server (PPAS), provides higher-level security capabilities, advanced performance features, and extensive Oracle compatibility. While a proprietary product, PPAS provides exceptionally low total cost of ownership (TCO) because it is built directly upon the PostgreSQL open-source core. The sections below provide a brief overview of PPAS Oracle compatibility features and EnterpriseDB s ability to assist you with your Oracle migration strategy. 10

11 The Power of Postgres + Oracle Compatibility PostgreSQL is the world s most powerful open source database. It is used in many of the world s largest database applications, including a wide range of commercial and public sector systems and missions. EnterpriseDB s Postgres Plus Advanced Server implements a comprehensive compatibility framework, including Oracle database calls and numerous other operations, directly within the PostgreSQL database core. In some cases the operations are minor marshaling data and performing type conversions. In other cases, however, the PPAS compatibility framework is an operational workhorse, invisibly performing complex Oracle database operations in real time without impacting database throughput or latency. Examples of Oracle compatible functionality provided by PPAS include: Conversions of simple and complex data structures Support for Oracle SQL syntax and semantics Support for Oracle functions and packages Extensive support for PL/SQL, Oracle s stored procedure language Support for Oracle database interfaces Apps Apps Apps Apps Running Running Running Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle Database Interfaces Oracle and Postgres Plus Compatibility Framework Postgres Database Interfaces Postgres Plus Bi-directional database replication services between Oracle and PPAS PostgreSQL Whether you re migrating a single Oracle application or an entire portfolio, PPAS Oracle compatibility solutions pay for themselves on the first project. In addition, they significantly reduce time-to-value by allowing your team to focus on application and domain-specific migration tasks instead of implementing low-level database operations. You avoid the complex, error-prone work of building database compatibility shims. Instead, you focus on delivering an application that s functionally equivalent to its Oracle predecessor, running at a fraction of the cost. And if an unforeseen problem should occur during the migration process, multiple options are available from an easily implemented temporary switch back to Oracle or establishment of work-arounds and responsive field hot fixes. 11

12 Combining PPAS Oracle compatibility framework with EnterpriseDB s Oracle Migration Assessment and Oracle Migration Factory services, you can build a migration plan that s tailored to your unique needs and resources. EnterpriseDB s Oracle Migration Assessment Postgres Plus Advanced Server s Oracle compatibility provides a powerful, integrated interoperability with your existing Oracle applications. EnterpriseDB s Oracle Migration Assessment (OMA) is a technology-assisted consulting service through which experienced migration engineers work with you to assess the feasibility of using PPAS in place of Oracle for one or more of your applications. At the beginning of an OMA engagement, you provide EnterpriseDB with your Oracle database schema and discuss aspects of your applications (performance requirements, operating environment, etc.) with an EnterpriseDB migration engineer. Using specialized assessment technologies and migration best practices refined over many migration projects, EnterpriseDB will analyze your application based on five broad categories of compatibility. Once the technical assessment is completed, EnterpriseDB will send you a report that identifies all Oracle compatibility issues and risks, reduced to a single composite score. Your migration engineer will review the report findings with you in detail, explaining the feasibility of migrating your existing Oracle application to (or building a new system using) PPAS. And if you need to evaluate multiple applications for migration feasibility, EnterpriseDB can work with you to develop a portfolio-wide assessment that will form your overall migration plan. And when you re ready to implement your game plan, EnterpriseDB s Oracle Migration Factory provides you with a proven, fixed-cost migration service that leverages a ninth generation Oracle-compatible database, automated migration tools, and years of migration experience. The result is a fast, low-risk migration that allows you to deploy migrated applications (and achieve the resulting cost savings) in the shortest possible time. 12

13 Time to Value Given the large magnitude of savings from moving off Oracle to a much lower cost alternative, it is imperative to make the shift as quickly as possible in order to begin realizing those savings. If moving to a low TCO alternative such as Postgres Plus Advanced Server could potentially save you 50% to 80% of your Oracle license and maintenance costs; then the budgetary impact of making that shift over a shorter time period could be quite substantial. The chart below, from a study conducted by HP, shows a cumulative, 3-year savings of $1,706,673 by moving from Oracle to EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Advanced Server on HP Integrity BL890c server blades. This represents a return on investment of 27% with an internal rate of return of 101%, and a payback period of 12 months. EnterpriseDB has created the tools needed to evaluate your applications for migration difficulty. Further, EnterpriseDB can provide you with the mentorship and engineering resources to augment your team s capabilities or even complete your migration for you. Coupled with Postgres Plus Advanced Server s Oracle compatibility features, you have a powerful combination to ensure that your migrations happen quickly and successfully without having to re-train staff or endure disruption to your operations. 13

14 Summary Database usage is increasing sharply at a time when license and maintenance fees are also on the rise. Motivated by successful migrations to Linux and JBoss, IT organizations are turning to open source based RDBMS alternatives to control costs and improve operating leverage. Past experiences reveal that database migration is a continuum. New systems can be developed at low risk and with excellent ROI, and existing applications can be enhanced through database interoperability. For example, many Oracle shops are now offloading read-heavy workloads to EnterpriseDB s Postgres Plus Advanced Server, dramatically improving both analytic and OLTP throughput at a fraction of the cost of adding more Oracle instances. Other organizations are more aggressive, migrating edge and mission critical core systems entirely from Oracle to PPAS to realize significantly greater savings. Migrating from Oracle to open source based alternatives like Postgres Plus Advanced Server requires a clear understanding of human, technical and operational risks, and a game plan by which to manage those risks over an extended time horizon. That game plan includes a comprehensive technical assessment of your application databases, Oracle compatibility software that eliminates migration risks and costs, and a partner with deep domain expertise in Oracle database migrations. To facilitate the migration and interoperability of Oracle applications with Postgres databases, EnterpriseDB has developed a comprehensive software framework that implements Oracle database calls (and numerous other operations) directly upon the PostgreSQL database core. Combining PPAS Oracle compatibility framework with EnterpriseDB s Oracle Migration Assessment and Oracle Migration Factory services, you can build a migration plan that will minimize risk, reduce operational pain of migration, and enable more rapid time to value. "We've switched from an Oracle database to Postgres Plus Advanced Server with EnterpriseDB. With a cost reduction of 50% for our database, we can invest in other IT-domains. We do not have to compromise on reliability, performance or support, even though we only pay for what we use. EnterpriseDB has a crystal clear license policy, and are open for options: no limitations through virtualisation, and no restraints on the CPU Cores." Joris Geuens, Van Genechten Packaging Get Started Today. Let EnterpriseDB help you build and execute your Oracle migration game plan. Contact us at or , or send an to info@enterprisedb.com to get started today on your path to database independence. 14

15 About EnterpriseDB EnterpriseDB, based in Bedford, MA, is the leading worldwide provider of enterprise-class PostgreSQL and Oracle database compatibility products and services. Used by thousands of business and government customers, EnterpriseDB delivers the industry s best price-performance in a relational database. Employing some of the most innovative members of the PostgreSQL Community, EnterpriseDB builds upon 25-plus years of development to provide companies a proven, secure and feature-rich alternative to costly traditional databases. EnterpriseDB s Postgres Plus family of products includes the open source Community PostgreSQL, on-premise advanced databases with Oracle compatibility, a Database-as-a-Service with its Postgres Plus Cloud Database and enterprise management and monitoring tools. Founded in 2004, EnterpriseDB is backed by Charles River Ventures, Volition Capital (formerly Fidelity Ventures), Valhalla Partners and strategic investors including Red Hat, IBM, NTT and KT. For more information, please visit 15