The Issue
Exeter University were in need of a stable and reliable SQL Server and Oracle solution for the management of their databases.
The challenge was two-fold:
- Exeter wanted to avoid cost increases over the term of the contract while guaranteeing a better service that could ensure 24/7/365 support.
- The geographical position of the University made it extremely challenging to find teams with suitable skills.That’s when the University looked for an alternative solution: moving the day-to-day management of their databases to a fully managed service.
The Challenges
Cost of 24/7/365 database management
Exeter University relies on a database estate consisting of Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL for their daily operation; due to the complexity of this estate the University had to employ a minimum of three full-time Database Administrators (DBAs) to ensure that the databases were managed 24/7/365.
Ever-changing technology landscape
In an age when technology is in constant development, the University recognised the critical importance of entrusting their database estate to someone that could ensure the most up-to-date expertise.
Specific database issues
Exeter University needed a strategic partner to support and develop their database estate for large scale digital transformation.
One single point of failure
Due to budget pressures, that affect Universities across the country, combined with the Exeter location, finding the right skills was challenging and the University couldn’t secure a formal oncall-rota given the limited number of positions combined with the technical complexity in the estate.
Managed Service
In a search to control costs while ensuring the University could rely on the right level of support and expertise, the Solutions Delivery team started to look for an alternative solution.
A Managed Service was a first-time experience for the University in this area, but the team realised that managed services could be the only way to address the challenges they were facing and decided to embark on a thorough research process to understand the market.
A professional and rigorous approach was used to make sure any future solution would work for the University.
The tender exercise took many months and required a very detailed response from the multiple companies that applied. At the end of the process, Exeter selected WellData as their partner of choice.
“You now cover out of hours fully for us, although with your proactivity we probably don’t need it now.”
– Development manager
The Solution
24/7/365 database management
Continuous monitoring, with no limit on the amount of advice, interventions or support offered.
- 24/7/365 monitoring, problem resolution, and root-cause analysis
- Proactive health checks
- Continuous operational improvements
- Change requests for design and implementations
- Configuration management
- Backup monitoring
- Capacity planning
- Upgrade and migration planning
- Backup/export on-demand service
Day-to-day database maintenance
- Performance tuning, high availability testing, and disaster recovery
- Service pack, patching and hot fixing
- Database refresh of development/test installations
Database implementation services
– project basis
- Database upgrades, installation, and configuration
- Schema/table verification
- Database migrations
- Pre-deployment testing
- Deployment to production services
- New database design service
- Log interrogations
- Database decommissioning
- Database licence optimisation
- Provide advice and guidance on migration to the cloud
