The Challenge
A Financial Services firm recognized that it was time to update its aging system. It was running SAP ASE on Sun Solaris’ operating system and hardware, which was expensive to maintain and replace. Moving to a new platform would give the company access to a more powerful system while lowering costs. Because the firm managed sensitive financial data, maintaining data security during the transition was a top priority.
The Approach
The organization set about researching its alternatives. It determined that a remote DBA and database managed service provider could not only deliver the services they needed, it could potentially save them much of the cost and frustration related to hiring in-house. Additionally, MSP’s also perform one-off valuable services like emergency assistance, “lift and shift” to the cloud, security assessments, and even database migrations.
The Solution
Spinnaker Support migrated the firm’s operating system from Sun Solaris to Linux and upgraded SAP ASE from version 12.5.4 to 15.7. Spinnaker set up standby replication to a second SAP ASE 15.7 server and used multi-site availability (MSA) to replicate back to the old Sun Solaris 12.5 server for 30 days. This protected the firm’s data and removed the risk of network downtime. Because SAP Sybase ASE supports cross-platform dump and load, backing up the firm’s data and restoring it on the new system was a straightforward process.
The Results
Moving SAP Sybase ASE to Linux allowed the Financial Services firm to break free from costly Solaris hardware while maintaining the reliability and security of its system. The company lowered costs significantly and gained access to more memory. Because Spinnaker Support handled the SAP ASE migration during non-work hours, the company avoided employee downtime.