Case Studies
(First of its kind in Japan) Transferring an Active Oracle Database to Bare Metal Solution For Oracle
（From left）
Cloud Ace
Business Development section
Naoki Nakano
Sanken Environmental Engineering
・Management head department, Information Businesses department Keigo Yamanaka
・Management head department, Information Businesses department Misaki Ueda
Cloud Ace
Business Development section, Sales department Shu Kawasaki
Techical section, System Development department
Leader Kohei Yoshimura
Ooichi Nagano
Sanken Environmental Engineering is an environmental creation firm for air and water. They are an independent construction equipment company that proposes highly trusted cutting edge technology to create the environment that clients wish for.
Founded in 1946, they have been supporting the lifecycle of buildings through activities. Activities include planning for air filtration systems, sanitary facilities, electrical equipment, to designing, constructing, maintaining, and renewing buildings.
Sanken used a system for their salary and ID management, and was looking for a good time for replacing servers and adding new services. This required the installation of SSDs, so they decided to switch from their on-premise system to Bare Metal Solution For Oracle (BMS)
Pre-implementation objectives
Mr. Yamanaka：
While most of our core systems are already on Google Cloud, our salary and ID management system based on Oracle Database could not be transferred to Google Cloud, due to licensing issues.
In addition, when we began using Google Cloud, we had transitioned much of the datacenter servers to within our company. This brought up issues during hardware malfunctions, and disaster readiness inspections required the system to temporarily shut down. These convinced us to transition to a cloud based design.
During this, BMS had expanded its operations to Tokyo, so we decided on this transition.
Background for project
Mr. Yamanaka：
For this project, we implemented BMS for the salary and ID management system. It is a system that all employees use when clocking in or out, as well as for requesting off days.
Each site is connected with Google Cloud via a VPN, and users have varying levels of IT proficiency. This meant that we needed a transition that would not require changes to the current user experience, and that would have no impacts on the user.
Major Challenges
Risk of damage (fault tolerance)
Service stops
Management of hardware (availability)
Year-round, 24/7 management not possible
About system development
Mr. Yamanaka：
While our original plan to transition during a server replacement was set to be done in around a year, the need to use SSD’s necessitated a development time of 3 months.
Being such a short development time, and since it was our first time using Oracle VM, we had neither the knowledge nor skills required.
We initially expected to connect the BMS through our existing VPC, but this could not be done because the VPN of existing points conflicted with the AS number (Autonomous System number).
After having discussions with Google Cloud and Cloud Ace members, we solved this problem by inserting New VPC in the middle.
In addition, as Oracle VM’s storage method was unique, we had to adjust several times. In the end we were able to secure plenty of all-flash storage, resulting in quick and stable processing.
System Overview
Mr. Yamanaka：
We separately installed AP and DB inside of the BMS. We used Oracle VM for virtualization, and Cloud Load Balancing in the AP server for SSO (Single Sign On) authentication.
AP is used in the ID management system, but since we could not connect to networks outside of the BMS, we made external connections through NAT.
The VPC on the left has an instance for managing Oracle VM, and this houses our core systems and internal services.
By setting up “New VPC” and “BMS”, the users are now able to make a direct connection to the AP.
Background to the project
Mr. Yamanaka：
When we were implementing Google Cloud into our core systems, we made use of Cloud Ace’s Cloud Booster service and developed alongside them.
We hoped this would lead to flexible responses for additional objectives. We had already established mutual trust after having ties for a long time, so Cloud Ace was a no-brainer.
This project had many firsts for our company, but we were able to compensate for our shortfall in our knowledge by discussing with Cloud Ace when needed.
Future outlook
Mr. Ueda：
Recently, the implementation of remote work has increased the number of employees working from home, so the network security of employees has become an issue.
We plan to improve the security of both remote and on-site workers by a well implemented VPN.
In addition, although we would like to separate by each service, we are transferring by instances because we are currently using our existing VM.
Engineers who worked on this project
Yoshimura/Nagano：
Sanken Environmental Engineering implements new technologies to solve issues, and we have been stimulated by their high motivation. We are very grateful for being chosen to support them.
We are sure there are many businesses considering developments similar to this case study. Please consider Cloud Ace for your needs.
※This case study is published on Google Cloud Japan’s official blog.
Please feel free to visit that article as well.