The Challenge
As a financial services consulting firm with four regional offices, Callan Associates relies on seamless and secure access to business data to serve its clients. In early 2014, the company had grown tired of the limitations of its aging Windows-based system. It struggled with maintenance costs and downtime caused by weekly reboots, frequent patch installations, and memory issues that interfered with worker productivity.
Callan made the decision to migrate from a Windows to Linux platform. It needed to accomplish this without interrupting workflow or compromising data integrity.
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
To help Callan Associates achieve its goals, Spinnaker Support designed a data-migration and system-upgrade plan that could be completed and tested over a weekend. Elements of the plan included migration from Windows to Linux operating system and an upgrade from SAP ASE 15.0.3 to SAP ASE 15.7. Spinnaker also transitioned Callan from standalone hardware to VM hardware and used BCP (bulk copy protocol) to update page size from 2K to 8K. In addition, Spinnaker designed a proactive rollback strategy to prevent system downtime and included data-integrity testing to ensure workflow continuity.
The Results
Callan’s migration had an immediate impact on the company’s operations. The new solution removed bottlenecks, lowered costs, and reduced database administration and maintenance burdens. The company also benefited from the increased response time and greater system stability that the latest version of SAP ASE delivered, as well as improved disaster recovery protection through use of VM hardware. Because Spinnaker’s rollout plan required no application changes or system downtime, the transition was seamless for Callan’s employees.