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‘Design, implementation and management of a highly resilient / available SQL

server solution to significantly decrease Recovery Time Objectives / Recovery Point

Objectives’

Client Study 5: Leading Supermarket Chain

Our client is a leading supermarket chain, operating a mission-critical business

application deployed on Microsoft SQL Server technology. They are dependent on

maintaining a high-degree of data resilience and availability throughout an extended

period of growth.

Issues:

Legacy application

Non-supported database technology

Aging hardware

30% year on year compound business growth

The customer had been experiencing a sustained period of compound growth (circa

30% year on year), which is predicted to continue for the foreseeable future.

Prompted by this forecasted success, the customer re-evaluated the IT solutions and

made the decision to re-architect and implement a solution which could scale to meet

with the projected growth over a 5 year period.

This project would involve network upgrades, hardware refresh, Microsoft SQL Server

evaluation / design and an application upgrade, with all of these requiring the

management and support of its associated partner prior to the go-live date.

It was crucial that the solution allowed for a high level of data resilience and offered

the necessary scalability to comfortably cope with the forecasted growth throughout

the five-year plan. To this point the client had been operating a single SQL Server

instance with localised log shipping. This setup had been poorly designed and

configured, a fact that quickly became apparent as the business experienced a period

of rapid growth. The evaluation of this environment identified extremely high RTO and

RPO’s, while offering a low level of database and data resilience.

Electron House, Bridge Street, Sandiacre, Nottingham, NG10 5BA Phone: 0845 222 9600

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The client specifically stipulated in their brief that they wanted assurance that they

could still operate a fully functioning business, free from performance constraints,

even if their current primary data-centre should be wiped out through unavoidable

circumstance.

Xynomix’s Solution:

The initial architecture and implementation of the client’s mission-critical systems,

combined with 24/7 monitoring and support with an aim to significantly increase data-

resilience and availability.

Xynomix’s initial task was to design a solution based around a detailed assessment of

the client’s business, data-criticality and availability requirements. As outlined in the

client’s brief, it was essential that their systems remained functional, even in the event

of a complete data-centre failure.

The Xynomix team designed and proposed a highly available solution operating over 2

datacentre locations. Each datacentre would consist of a 2-node active/passive

Microsoft SQL Server cluster, underpinned by a clustered VMware infrastructure

(provisioned by the client hardware supplier) and having suitable CPU / Memory

capacity to scale up as the business demand increases.

Utilising Microsoft SQL Server replication (locally and cross-site) Xynomix were then

able to provide further levels of data resilience to ensure that two identical sets of

business data were consistently maintained.

The system design and implementation process was subsequently backed up with a

24x7x365 proactively monitored/managed support service, ensuring that key system

indicators remained within their pre-determined parameters. The customer has

remained fully-informed of support and maintenance demands throughout, ensuring

that they are able to continuously measure the project success against the projected

business plan.

Key Skills Used: SQL Server design, Windows clustering, SQL Server Replication and

general troubleshooting

Electron House, Bridge Street, Sandiacre, Nottingham, NG10 5BA Phone: 0845 222 9600

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Client Benefits:

Increased data resilience with vastly reduced RTO’s and RPO’s as a part of a pro-active

managed support service.

Following the implementation of the Xynomix solution and on-going support contract,

the customer is now comfortable that their business would be able to continue as

normal in the event of a data centre disaster, with the time taken to recover from such

a disaster having been largely minimised.

Data resilience has been significantly increased with the utilisation of cross-site

replication and multiple datacentre locations. Maintaining two ‘transactionally

identical’ sets of data is now a standard business practice and provides the customer

with multiple commercial and operational benefits.

The provision of a ‘Xynomix Proactive Management Services’ ensures that any system

changes are immediately noted and addressed before they become a noticeable issue

to the end-user or business process. Proactive monitoring guarantees that agreed

parameters are consistently maintained.

In summary the client is now operating a resilient Microsoft SQL Server architecture

that remains fully scalable moving forwards, allowing for the successful realisation of

their five-year growth plan. Xynomix have continued to work with the customer

continuously since the project commenced in 2011.

www.xynomix.com