"Tape" optimized IT infrastructure implementation of Oracle Exadata

On April 24, 2015 it became known of completion of works on optimization of IT infrastructure of Lenta company using the hardware and software system Oracle Exadata Database Machine. The partner in the project of CORUS Consulting Group with assistance of specialists and hardware-software base of FORS Distribution company.

Project Tasks

The IT environment of Lenta company is represented by more than 20 corporate information systems, 300 data transmission channels connecting shops and distribution centers with the central office, several server premises united in the distributed data processing center. The IT service supports more than 6 thousand jobs of users in different regions of the country.

Intensive growth of business of the customer caused growth of number of users and volume of the used data, increase of load of the operating information systems, emergence of new information systems. It served as the driver of a large-scale initiative of IT service of the retailer on review of opportunities of the operating IT infrastructure and search of new technological solutions for fall forward of data processing and formation of the operational reporting.

Shop of Lenta network, 2014

"Development of retail and its formation as mature otrasliv Russia with very high level of the competition led to formation of new understanding of business needs and waiting of new opportunities from information technologies. Modern solutions become the integral component of business. We understand that existence of the effective information systems working in real time and with a heavy load — serious advantage. For this reason emergence of hardware-software solutions which will allow us to resolve effectively issues and scalings, and productivities of our IT systems became the next stage of development of information landscape of our company" — Vsevolod Kuzmich, CIO "Lenta" noted.

In 2013, by the beginning of the project, all business systems worked on modern RISC-machines of the enterprise level, united in clusters for effective use of resources by means of the systems of balancing of loading. When developing the strategy of development for IT infrastructure revealed that the similar architecture has restrictions and concedes to new technological solutions.

Project Progress

The IT service of Lenta company analyzed reports of the leading world analytical agencies and selected several candidate solutions, they were tested on real data. Except basic selection criteria — the guaranteed fault tolerance, capability to work with large volumes of data, existence in Russia of the qualified partners in system integration and presence of experience of implementation of significant quantity of the similar systems at them — the scalability and system performance became important parameters when choosing.

At a final stage two systems of different producers during which testing it was necessary to recreate at stands loading on real data, identical to productive were selected. Performance was estimated on the speed of creation of resource-intensive reports and runtime of the most difficult transactions in the different modes of loading of the equipment. Also comparison with similar indicators on already available infrastructure was made. The cumulative effect observed as a result of a pilot project depending on technology reached quadruple performance improvement in addition to reduction of the stored data, due to compression and technology features.

Based on several test stages it is revealed that for tasks Tape an optimal solution - the hardware and software system Oracle Exadata. The choice is caused as technology criteria:

• fault tolerance,
• scalability
• performance,

and the fact that the solution of Oracle gives the chance to consolidate databases of the majority of the systems, critical for business, using Oracle Database.

Project Results

As of April 23, 2015 the management system for corporate resources (SAP ERP) and some other business applications is postponed for Oracle Exadata. Productive use of the solution Oracle Exadata for SAP applications showed - expectations of business on a gain of performance are completely reached.

"Stability of work of the ERP system on it was important criterion of the final choice of the solution. ERP for any retailer is the central nervous system with a huge volume of the transferred and processed data. Now about 20 TB of data with which daily work from three to four thousand employees therefore the operability of a system should be provided 24/7 365 days in a year are stored in our ERP system, – Vsevolod Kuzmich told. – Based on operation within a year we can note that reliability of the solution Oracle Exadata completely met our expectations, and of course, we still under an impression of system implementation speed – migration of the productive SAP ERP system on Exadata took only three days".

"Also there is a wish to note that we found a method to optimize TCO (total cost of ownership, total cost of ownership). – Nikolay Vyatkin, the Deputy Chief information officer to a poinfrastruktura and services, Tape emphasized. — First, the solution Exadata on disks of the high capacity (high capacity) was selected, secondly, in use we saw that the disk space and RAM are utilized quicker than the processor power therefore as expansion for 2015 we did not begin to scale a system linearly. Instead memory and disk capacity was simply added that is several times more economic than standard approach on scaling. Such flexibility is serious advantage of complexes of Oracle unlike other solutions which we considered".

"Repeated increase in productivity and consolidation of IT resources – the major advantage of our optimized complexes which are so necessary for clients today. We are glad that Oracle Exadata helps Lenta company, one of leaders of the Russian retail, to dynamically develop and reduce total cost of ownership of IT, providing essential increase in productivity not only Oracle applications, but also solutions of other suppliers. It is important that they work at the Oracle Database platform, the leader in the field of DBMS in the world, – Andrey Pivovarov, the head of group of perspective technologies of preproject consulting, Oracle CIS noted. – More and more leading companies in Russia make the choice for benefit of our integrated systems to accelerate innovations in the business, and we will continue to support our clients by the most advanced solutions".