See how Amazon, a large corporation, tackled the challenges of database expansion

Challenges

Amazon.com is the world’s largest online retailer. But as a rookie, the business started out selling books, which eventually expanded to include other products over the years. To be precise, Amazon has grown from a small start-up to a large corporation over time. On the way to business development, Amazon has faced many challenges related to database expansion. One of those setbacks was the growing size of the Oracle database and other databases that caused backup issues. The problem escalated and had a direct impact on Amazon’s business.

After expanding its services, Amazon faces a big challenge with the growing content of the database. This has resulted in an increase in the time and investment spent on tape hardware, the data center space for that hardware, and the corporate license fees for tape software. In addition, the booming infrastructure has also forced Amazon to recruit highly qualified personnel to spend time setting up the tape infrastructure, certifying, and planning the technical archives instead of embarking on deeper downturns. higher value projects. Due to the existing database, the company must also spend more time on audits, forecasting and budgeting. When Amazon tried to automate the software backup process using tape bots, it didn’t go well. While robots could do basic read or write jobs, the infrastructure required tape backup software to fully utilize the information. This put pressure on cost management and impacted the budget.

On the other hand, the data stored on the tape databases was also very critical so that Amazon could not afford to lose it. They were often picked up from the tape. The company used tape bots or backup software to find the required data. Although the process was largely automatic, it did come with challenges such as hardware failure. Once the process is complete, human workers must step in and restore the tape. Unfortunately, multiple tape requests slowed down the restore process.

Initiatives

To address the underlying challenges of expanding the database, Amazon.com evaluated Amazon S3 (Amazon Web Services) to make improvements to data backup. During the evaluation process, it was assured that Amazon S3 exploited extraordinary features in terms of security, availability and performance. In addition, Amazon.com has also performed analysis to ensure that it is economically fit to move from existing infrastructure to Amazon S3.

One major thing that Amazon.com wanted to keep under control when migrating the database was the cost spent on it. On the other hand, the company also demanded faster backup and restore performance. Fortunately, Amazon S3 turned out to be a perfect fit that could save time by running 2-12 times faster when restoring from tape. The new media also addressed both pressure issues and improved performance and reduced overall cost. In addition, Amazon.com looked for better durability and uptime when changing models. Fortunately, Amazon S3 was created with 99.99% durability and uptime, making it a better solution for business needs. Another thing that concerned Amazon.com was Amazon S3’s ability to benefit from viable database backups. However, the service was exceptional as it provided a seamless connection between the company’s tape database and Oracle RMAN. It also takes advantage of next-generation security and meets Amazon.com security standards.

Results

Finally, after carefully assessing Amazon.com’s concerns and its counter-impacts by Amazon S3, the company used the service and found it to be very beneficial. Amazon.com’s growth is inevitable. Over the years, the company has expanded its services both at the product level and geographically. Amazon S3 has allowed the company to keep pace with the rapid expansion. The solution also reduced the time spent listing backup plans, the cost and frequency of tape resources. Amazon S3 completely ruled out the need for formal planning because it doesn’t have an upper limit on data storage, so the infrastructure wouldn’t run out of resources at any time. It also avoided the time consuming and expensive process of acquiring tape robots, tape drives, tape inventory, data center space, network equipment, or corporate backup software.

Usually, during the tape restore process, finding the right file, locating the correct tape, reading data, and restoring content is a long process. This becomes even more critical when the restore process involves multiple tapes and crashes occur due to a data center failure. But at Amazon S3, data restores can begin immediately, and even multiple tape discoveries can occur simultaneously, reducing time and speeding up the process. Due to its direct connectivity to Oracle RMAN backups, Amazon S3 can easily support backup processes. In addition, Amazon S3 has also responded to Amazon.com’s sustainability concerns. Often times, the business has experienced a hardware failure during the restore process with the tape infrastructure unable. But with Amazon S3, Amazon.com worries less about crashes.

A major issue that Amazon S3 addresses while addressing tape database challenges is freeing up valuable human resource time. Previously, in order to provide a suitable tape infrastructure, Amazon.com hired data center engineers and technicians. They were only dedicated to troubleshooting hardware issues. Fortunately, with the help of Amazon S3, the company can free up employees’ time on repetitive tasks and require them to engage in intellectual operations. Disruptive service can even reduce the costs of transporting, securing, and storing corporate tapes offsite.

As part of Amazon’s mission to innovate and operate futuristic services, Amazon S3 emerged as a major breakthrough that replaced tape with storage for database backups.

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