CNS Middle East delivers an Oracle RAC cluster on Azure cloud to International Securities LLC

As a part of a digital transformation project for International Securities LLC, one of the leading brokerage houses in the Emirates, CNS faced a task of establishing an Oracle RAC cluster on Azure infrastructure.

To complete the task, CNS worked with FlashGrid, the experts on establishing cloud infrastructure for highly available databases.

The collaboration had three stages: initial assessment, deployment, and comprehensive support.

Initial assessment

FlashGrid offered to CNS a highly available database architecture based on FlashGrid Cluster that has no single point of failure. Utilizing Azure availability zones further contributed to the resilience of the infrastructure.

Proper sizing of the cluster was ensured by a review of AWR reports from the on-premises system and conducting a performance test on a proof-of-concept cluster.

Deployment

After CNS had ensured that the performance meets the goals set by the end customer, a production system was deployed on Azure:

• the desired sizing and parameters of the cluster were entered into FlashGrid Launcher tool
• an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) infrastructure-as-code template was generated by FlashGrid Launcher based on the inputs
• the ARM template was run in customer’s Azure tenant, and the Oracle RAC cluster was created automatically, from provisioning the infrastructure to installing and configuring the entire software stack
• CNS administrators migrated the database from the old on-premises system to Azure

24/7 support

CNS collaboration with FlashGrid then proceeded into the support phase, where CNS is in charge of managing the customer’s RAC cluster deployed on Azure, while FlashGrid support is available 24/7 to assist CNS with any questions related to the functioning of cluster infrastructure.