Oklahoma Department of Human Services

Child Welfare Database Migration

Or

How to Drive Oneself Crazyand

Still Have Fun

The KIDS Systemas of Autumn 2000

• Powerbuilder thick client with Oracle backend• HP9000 T-500 6 90 Mhz PA-RISC 7100 CPUs• Hard drives at the end of support life• SCSI attached RAID• HP-UX 10.20• Oracle 7.3.4• Supports 600+ users• Token Ring

The Original Plan

• Upgrade hardware to modern HP hardware

• Dual processor PA-RISC 8500

• Failover system (MC/Serviceguard)

• Fibre attached SAN (va7100)

• Bonded 100mb ethernet

HP Positives

• Uptime measured at 99.999%

• Increased disk throughput

• Increased processing capacity

• 64 bit operating system

HP Negatives

• Expensive support

• Idle CPU cycles

• Multiple hardware platforms

• Multiple DASD platforms

An Unrelated Project?

It’s time to upgrade that ole mainframe thing-a-majig

IBM Makes a Proposal

Shhhh! Chris likes it!

Linux?

IBM’s Proposal

• Apply money allocated to KIDS upgrade to z/900 purchase

• Purchase two IFL’s for z/VM and Linux

• Offer a lot of help

IBM Positives

• Consolidation of hardware

• Single source for support

• Hardware reliability

• Utilize existing storage infrastructure

• z/VM allows for better resource management

• Leverage tight pocketbook

IBM Negatives

• Oracle RDBMS not yet available for production

• Linux relatively unproven in mission critical environments

• No failover capability

• Scalability concerns

• Management uneducated about Linux

The Decision . . .

The Decision . . .

Is Linux

Issues encountered

• Database corruption

• 2000/4000 character field

• 31 bit 2 gigabyte limit

• Online backup solution

• Sysadmin education

• User education

• Management education

Positives encountered

• Oracle is Oracle

• Applicability of existing Unix knowledge

• Linux is configured more securely

• Management becomes more open to Linux solutions

• Fundamental changes in recovery and security concepts

Two years later . . .

Final migration scheduled for April 10, 2004

After the Migration

• z/VM 4.4

• Oracle 10g

• Availability– RAC– Response