About the Customer
Industry: Shipping & Logistics
The client is one of the largest container terminal operators in the world. It operates over 70 ports and terminal facilities in 40 counties across five continents.
With the global presence in 55+ countries, they have access to the main shipping lines and immediate access to a rich hinterland and key markets in northwest India. It is a multi-cargo port and terminal operators handling containers, bulk, liquids including petroleum products, chemicals, edible oil, bitumen, LPG cargo, and RoRo cargo. In 2017, it handled the 100,000th Auto Unit which is considered as a key milestone in just 20 months.
Key Challenges
One of the primary functions of the client is import-export of goods through the vessels & train. They have 24*7 business critical application running on almost 1TB SQL database and nearly 10 other SQL databases & applications running on SQL server platform. Applications running on these SQL server databases are accessed worldwide.
- One of the major problems the client was facing is poor SQL server performance
- The application was running slow due to fragmentation of indexes in the database
- Also, there were no automated Full & Transaction log backups due to which log file was getting full at times leading to the unnecessary outage
- They also could not afford downtime and they were in search of a solution to optimize the performance of the database/application and carry out the necessary on-going maintenance
- The need of 24 x 7, proactive maintenance & DBA monitoring of SQL databases
Our Solution
Post engagement of SQL DBA services with the client, our team carried out routine Database Administration with a focus on uptime & compliance.
- Performed extensive fragmentation check on the databases & tracked the fragmented indexes
- Rebuilt the fragmented indexes & optimized the performance of the application
- Initiated the process of performing a weekly SQL health check of all the SQL databases to find any loopholes/issues
- To avoid the downtime scenario, our team started the process of Online Rebuilding fragmented indexes biweekly, based on the need of the situation
- Configured Maintenance Plan for automatic scheduling of database backups to have a point-in-time recovery of the databases whenever required
- Considering the criticality of 24*7 operational database, our team suggested Log Shipping of SQL database & configured it on client’s DR site for higher availability
- To avoid any application outage, our team was capable of making secondary DB server as primary one in case of downtime
- Performance Monitoring and Tuning using inbuilt tools
- Isolated performance problems and identified bottlenecks along with troubleshooting of day to day SQL Server issues
- Automated & scheduled SQL Server Agent Jobs for DBA tasks
- Ensured platform uptime & response times within proposed SLA
Tools & Technologies
Business Benefits
SPEC India’s successful engagement of DBA services benefited clients in the following ways:
- Active DBA monitoring of 12 Production DB Servers consisting of 12 SQL databases
- 24*7 smooth operations of vessels & shipping
- Performance of their business-critical application has been increased immensely
- Automation of the scheduled backups has overcome the problem of point-in-time recovery of the databases
- A configuration of Log Shipping at DR site has addressed the need for Disaster recovery
- No more worries related to downtime of the business critical application
- Weekly & monthly reporting of the databases has provided statistics on the status of client databases including figures like the growth of data over that period
- Bottlenecks & showstoppers are stopped in advance prior to their occurrence