DB Schenker Uses Progress® Professional Services to Manage Its Progress® OpenEdge® Databases
Industries:
Transportation & LogisticsChallenge
DB Schenker’s enterprise class solution was on older hardware and had a complicated setup. Alongside those issues, DB Schenker could not track the health of its databases and server.
Solution
Partner with Progress Professional Services to migrate databases and servers to a more stable environment, work alongside MDBA team to review the system for gaps and set up a future capacity for the cloud to avoid capacity issues.
Result
Successfully migrated 23 databases, 5.4 TB of data and 20 separate servers; enabling three to four times faster batch processing and report generation without periodic issues; significantly reducing server backup time from five to six hours to just one-and-a-half hours.
Full Story
Challenge
Servicing 140 countries worldwide with transportation logistics software, DB Schenker is an international leader in its respective industries. DB Schenker works alongside its customers in the land, sea, air and warehouse sectors. Since they have a large customer base, the company needs to keep its software solutions running efficiently. Piotr Świerczyński, Head of Global Infrastructure Systems for DB Schenker, discusses how the company’s existing solution was experiencing troubles. Notably, it was located on an older server, which can create all sorts of problems.
Piotr and his team were running into other issues related to a complex setup. They had to work with several blind spots, such as the limited ability to check system health in an informative way. Sometimes, they were unable to conduct system health checks. While establishing a disaster recovery process, they still needed help tracking it effectively regarding periodic recovery. Piotr was seeking a cloud migration service and ways to manage their databases in one simplified location efficiently.
Before we moved through the project, we had a big problem with our servers, where they would shut down. And as it came back up, I was already reaching out to MDBA colleagues, who had already been working on it to get it up-and-running.
Piotr Świerczyński
Head of Global Infrastructure Systems, DB Schenker
Solution
Piotr and his team chose to work with Progress Professional Services to migrate applications with Progress® OpenEdge®. The company was already using the Managed Database Administration (MDBA) service and Piotr compliments the overall value of MDBA for his team and organization. DB Schenker wanted to migrate several components into a more stable environment and utilize the MDBA support for its numerous databases and servers and the amount of data on them.
After getting on board with the MDBA, the team began reviewing DB Schenker’s systems and wanted to fill in the above blindspots. And a large part of the effort came from MDBA’s tools. The servers were then prepared to deploy in Azure, and Progress® OpenEdge® Pro2TM tools synchronized the in-cloud servers. They also did a detailed capacity planning for the cloud, so as not to run into issues related to that.
Result
After the final system and capacity test, DB Schenker found the results to be ideal. They have successfully migrated 23 databases and a little over 5 TB of data. There were 20 servers, with five of them being database servers, migrated along with five database servers, REST application servers and a handful of supporting machines. One improvement across the board for DB Schenker comes in the form of an increase in batch processing and report generation and a decrease in backup time. The latter, which used to take close to six hours at a time, is now one-and-a-half hours. The ability to generate detailed reports without experiencing performance issues allows for better insight into what is going on within the systems.
DB Schenker found a significant decrease in both database latch wait times and daily time-outs. Previously, DB Schenker would experience 260K to 300K and it later improved to 150K per day. The two servers (both primary and failover) handle all migrated databases under Linux and have plenty of flexible resources to keep them running. Piotr is eager to continue using MDBA for their servers but also continues to appreciate the reporting and support his organization receives from Progress Professional Services.
We see the data and where we are in the systems, especially where the bottlenecks are. In doing so, we are looking through the data, how we are working with it and how it looks after migration, which is very important to me.
Piotr Świerczyński
Head of Global Infrastructure Systems, DB Schenker