A Guide to Running Oracle Workloads with Platform A Guide to Running Oracle Workloads with

If you have an on-premise , migrating to the cloud holds appeal because the cost of managing and maintaining legacy applications, , and supporting infrastructure can limit the ability to innovate. In fact, according to a Gartner report, 75% of workloads will migrate to the cloud by 2022. However, the process of actually moving database-driven applications to the cloud can be challenging.

Many enterprises have Oracle workloads such as databases or data warehouses, which can be an additional roadblock to overall digital transformation efforts. While many workloads can “lift and shift” to the cloud without too much difficulty, Oracle workloads present unique challenges because they often require certified hardware and expensive licensing and support agreements.

The benefits of migrating a database include great scalability, high availability, and good cost- efficiency. The Google Bare Metal Solution (BMS) can allow companies to bring their Oracle workloads to Google Cloud, allowing full access and integration with GCP services.

Built on top of the Google BMS, the Atos Database Hotel is a managed service for enterprise customers, providing organizations with a fully managed and secure cloud service, seamlessly integrated with Google Cloud, and leveraging Atos’ end-to-end orchestration, management, and infrastructure services.

For transactions processing applications with Oracle databases, one should consider the full set of cloud migration options: from application retirement, replacement with SaaS alternatives, or moving to cloud native databases like BigQuery and CloudSQL. All these variants might require a temporary solution to keep running the Oracle databases while transforming the related application landscape. Special co-location datacenter solutions like Google BMS to host Oracle databases can allow companies to bring their transaction application workloads to Google Cloud, allowing for full access and integration with GCP services.

Additionally, Oracle databases can be used for transaction processing systems but also for business information or data warehouse applications. These data warehouse applications can benefit from the flexibility of the cloud and advanced analytics tools involving Artificial Intelligence and and combinations of structured and unstructured data in data lakes. Atos has deep experience with the transformation of on-premise data warehouses to GCP based BI solutions.

Below we break down the situation for companies in this position, the benefits of moving to the cloud, and the challenges companies might face. We also discuss the specifics of the Google Cloud BMS and Atos Oracle Hotel solutions which simplify cloud migration and allow customers to take full advantage of Google Cloud services while continuing to leverage Oracle-dependant workloads.

Should my company migrate our Oracle workloads to the cloud?

A move to the cloud presents many potential benefits, but companies who have Oracle databases or data warehouses face specific setup requirements and license and support limitations when integrating with, or deploying on, public cloud platforms. Enterprises

1 "The Future of the DBMS Market Is Cloud - Gartner." 21 Jun. 2019, https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3941821/the-future-of-the-dbms-market-is-cloud A Guide to Running Oracle Workloads with Google Cloud Platform

that want to avoid vendor lock-in might not choose Oracle’s cloud option. So what are some other considerations to be made when weighing the decision to migrate applications with Oracle workloads to the cloud?

First, examine your current data center setup and any immediate plans to change that setup. Are all of your legacy systems on-premise? In this case, a foray into the cloud can be complex because of the sheer number of interdependent applications and databases. If this is your first time venturing into the cloud, it might be best to start small and migrate only certain workloads, such as relative ‘stand-alone’ workloads, initially. If you are looking for cost savings, Oracle workloads might be a good starting point to reduce support and licensing costs.

Are you closing your data center entirely to free up funds for a cloud transformation? This means you need to migrate everything to the cloud. In this case, does your chosen cloud provider have the capability to host your Oracle workloads with the licensing and support arrangements you require? If not, you will need a viable solution for Oracle workloads, and if so, you may require an interim home for those workloads until you have fully migrated to ensure there is no downtime.

No matter where you are on your cloud journey and whether you need a temporary or permanent solution for your Oracle workloads, as a stepping stone you will need a solution to run your legacy environment close to the public cloud of choice to enable hybrid cloud solutions to fit your needs.

There are other questions to consider when deciding whether it’s the right time to migrate your Oracle workloads. Is your Oracle support contract up for renewal soon? A move to the cloud can potentially decrease your support / licensing costs for Oracle, so if you’re close to renewal, it’s an ideal time to evaluate migration. If your next support contract renewal is still a ways off, this is a good time to do research on the steps to take for migration and make a decision for the future to allow for a longer timeline so you’re not scrambling to complete a migration when that date arrives.

Have you recently experienced service interruption due to unplanned downtime? This might have identified the need to migrate your mission-critical applications more quickly to avoid repeating the problem again in the future.

When it comes to selecting the cloud provider for your Oracle workloads, it's also important to consider if the provider allows you to run the required version of Oracle to be compatible with your application and to suit your service level requirements and if you will have full control of managing your deployment in the same way you could on premise.

All of these answers play an important role in determining whether migrating your Oracle workloads to the cloud, and specifically to Google Cloud Platform, makes sense.

What are the benefits of migrating my Oracle workloads to Google Cloud Platform?

Migration to the cloud unlocks the potential for you to take advantage of everything GCP has to offer for a cloud transformation, but it also provides additional benefits around cost, scalability, security, and more. Below are some of the expected benefits of migrating your Oracle workloads to GCP.

Flexibility With Google Cloud supporting the infrastructure for your Oracle workloads, organizations can look to modernize and accelerate digital transformation. Migrating to GCP will reduce your dependency on Oracle by leveraging Google ecosystem services, such as BigQuery and CloudSQL, for database operations. It also helps reduce data center and IT operations costs to enable resources to be reallocated to other areas. A Guide to Running Oracle Workloads with Google Cloud Platform

Cost Optimization Overall, migrating to the cloud provides enterprises with greater visibility into costs and the ability to only pay for what they’re using, when they’re using it. This exposes the use of resources so that resources can be properly assigned and, at the same time, automated technical operations free up your budget for other IT priorities. When it comes to your Oracle license support costs, using Google BMS can mitigate additional licensing costs to migrate Oracle workloads to a cloud environment. Moving Oracle workloads to BMS also enables you to eventually migrate off Oracle, leading to significant savings in support and licensing costs.

Scalability While on-premise compute resources are fixed and unable to meet the variable demands of a business, public cloud resources can be easily spun up as demand warrants. Google Cloud Platform enables enterprises to start at any size and scale up effectively, as needed. Simply put, resources can be deployed much more efficiently using GCP.

Additionally, you need to consider past barriers in terms of an application use. For example, now you can take advantage of the elastic nature of the public cloud to rapidly allocate and deallocate massively scalable resources to support business service on-demand compared to building out your own infrastructure to support that one-time peak demand for the year (e.g., call center application for Black Friday).

Advanced Analytics Migrating to GCP unlocks a world of possibilities for applying the data in Oracle for use with Google’s machine learning and advanced analytics. Google's BMS integrates with Google Cloud services to enable enterprises to easily leverage cloud-native databases, such as BigQuery, for their Oracle workloads to gain deeper insights into their business and their customers.

What is Google Bare Metal Solution (BMS)?

Now that you’ve learned more about why moving to Google Cloud could be a good fit for your Oracle workloads, it’s time to consider which solution will work best for your needs. With Google’s BMS, you can bring your Oracle workloads to Google Cloud, allowing you access and integration with GCP services with minimal latency. BMS provides the option to move existing Oracle environments into the cloud as-is with support for clustered deployments, with support for older versions of the database and existing administration tools.

BMS gives you the flexibility to bring your own licenses (BYOL), with identical Oracle licensing cost. Enterprises can take advantage of a single contract, unified billing across BMS and GCP services, and unified support from Google Cloud. Bare metal servers are available with as few as 16 cores, or all the way up to 112 cores with 3 terabytes of DRAM, all to handle your most demanding workloads. Google deploys BMS in a region extension with less than two millisecond latency to Google Cloud.

Setting up networks can sometimes be an obstacle to deploying enterprise applications quickly. BMS leverages Google’s Partner Interconnect framework, delivering routing that’s pre-configured and optimized for your use case. This simplifies complex tasks such as setting up replication across sites.

Google recently announced the availability of BMS in five regions: Ashburn, Virginia; Frankfurt; London; Los Angeles, California; and Sydney. By the end of 2020, they plan to launch four more sites: Amsterdam, São Paulo, Singapore, and Tokyo. In addition to all current Oracle instances, BMS also supports Oracle features like RAC and older versions of Oracle DB. A Guide to Running Oracle Workloads with Google Cloud Platform

What is Atos Oracle Hotel for GCP?

As a trusted Google Cloud Premier Partner, Atos is delivering its Atos Oracle Hotel on top of Google’s BMS. Atos Oracle Hotel is a managed service for enterprise customers, providing organizations with a fully managed and secure cloud service, seamlessly integrated with Google Cloud, and leveraging Atos’ end-to-end orchestration, management, and infrastructure services. . Atos Database Hotel enables you to combine the advantages of GCP with Oracle license cost reduction as it is based on Oracle LVM (OLVM) and offers a virtualized environment with solid performance and security. You can migrate your application landscapes to GCP and place the Oracle components on the Atos Database Hotel to save license costs. Atos Database Hotel is based on BullSequana S servers and is already in use with large corporate and government customers.

Atos Database Hotel runs on BullSequana S, the most agile, scalable and open platform to grow digital business. With its dynamic reconfiguration capabilities, it combines exceptional performance with unparalleled agility and generates efficiencies at every level and therefore optimize costs for Oracle customers. BullSequana S with the newest Intel Xeon scalable processors enable more power per licensed core.

In terms of licensing, Atos Database Hotel offers two key benefits. Because it is built on Google’s BMS, it enables Oracle customers to run their software on specific dedicated hardware, which complies with Oracle’s virtualization policies avoiding extra support costs.

The Atos Oracle Hotel Solution also offers an additional layer of “Oracle services” to Google’s BMS. This uses Oracle’s OLVM technology to hard partition the bare metal servers, enabling customers to not only limit licensing to particular servers, but also to partition those servers to license a portion of the capacity.

Atos Oracle Hotel is available to procure, purchase, deploy and use via Google Marketplace. The services provided include a Proof of Concept (POC), migration of the application(s) to GCP, and a comprehensive Managed Service offering for multiple configurations of the enabling platform. Enterprises then maintain a direct relationship with Google via their existing GCP License and GCP Marketplace agreements, including for all frontline support.

About Atos

Atos is a trusted Google Cloud partner that delivers secure hybrid cloud, machine learning and collaboration solutions to the enterprise. Atos works with Google Cloud to bring enterprises new secure business solutions encompassing hybrid cloud, data analytics and machine learning and the digital workplace. Atos has created three R&D centers and Innovation Labs in Europe and North America to focus on machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Contact us to learn more about how you can get started with a bare metal solution.

CONTACT

Erik Cramer Email: [email protected] Digital Transformation Office Product Manager