Actian Case Studies University of Western England Manages Major Migration Amidst Global Pandemic

Edit This Case Study Record

	University of Western England Manages Major Migration Amidst Global Pandemic Actian

University of Western England Manages Major Migration Amidst Global Pandemic

Actian

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases Processors & Edge Intelligence - Embedded Operating Systems
Applicable Industries	Cement Utilities
Applicable Functions	Product Research & Development Quality Assurance
Use Cases	Construction Management Smart Campus
Services	System Integration Testing & Certification
Challenge	The University of the West of England (UWE) was faced with the challenge of upgrading its student record system and underlying Ingres from Ingres 10 to Actian X, and migrating the entire system to the CentOS 8 implementation of Linux. This was a daunting task as the student record system was the only mission-critical application still running on the university’s aging Solaris UNIX systems. The challenge was further compounded by the global pandemic, which made it impossible for the teams to meet in person to plan or execute this critical project. The goal was to upgrade the database from Ingres 10.2 to Actian X 11.1 and to migrate the entire student record system from Solaris UNIX to the Linux platform, without interrupting access to the system. Read More
About Customer	The University of the West of England (UWE) is a public research university located in Bristol, England. It has more than 30,000 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs in the arts and humanities as well as the social and physical sciences. At the core of UWE is a custom-built student records system that tracks the courses and grades for the current crop of more than 30,000 enrolled undergraduate and graduate students. This system follows a student from the moment they express interest in UWE, through their application process, their enrollment and course of study, on to graduation, and beyond. It is a mission-critical system that keeps track of each engagement with the university throughout a student's tenure and beyond. Read More
Solution	To overcome this challenge, UWE turned to Actian Professional Services. Actian provided the full range of migration services that UWE needed to both upgrade to Actian X and migrate the student record system and its underlying database to Linux. Actian Professional Services helped UWE streamline its housekeeping and monitoring infrastructures and worked very closely—albeit remotely, due to the pandemic—with the UWE team to ensure the success of the project. As part of the upgrade project, Actian Professional Services deployed Actian’s Enterprise Monitoring Appliance Plus (EMA+), which provides a single graphical interface for monitoring multiple Ingres installations and servers. EMA+ can be configured to monitor and display a large number of Ingres, operating system, and network data points, while also focusing on all aspects of system availability and recoverability. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases

Processors & Edge Intelligence - Embedded Operating Systems

Applicable Industries

Cement

Utilities

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Construction Management

Smart Campus

Services

System Integration

Testing & Certification

Challenge

The University of the West of England (UWE) was faced with the challenge of upgrading its student record system and underlying Ingres from Ingres 10 to Actian X, and migrating the entire system to the CentOS 8 implementation of Linux. This was a daunting task as the student record system was the only mission-critical application still running on the university’s aging Solaris UNIX systems. The challenge was further compounded by the global pandemic, which made it impossible for the teams to meet in person to plan or execute this critical project. The goal was to upgrade the database from Ingres 10.2 to Actian X 11.1 and to migrate the entire student record system from Solaris UNIX to the Linux platform, without interrupting access to the system.

About Customer

The University of the West of England (UWE) is a public research university located in Bristol, England. It has more than 30,000 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs in the arts and humanities as well as the social and physical sciences. At the core of UWE is a custom-built student records system that tracks the courses and grades for the current crop of more than 30,000 enrolled undergraduate and graduate students. This system follows a student from the moment they express interest in UWE, through their application process, their enrollment and course of study, on to graduation, and beyond. It is a mission-critical system that keeps track of each engagement with the university throughout a student's tenure and beyond.

Solution

To overcome this challenge, UWE turned to Actian Professional Services. Actian provided the full range of migration services that UWE needed to both upgrade to Actian X and migrate the student record system and its underlying database to Linux. Actian Professional Services helped UWE streamline its housekeeping and monitoring infrastructures and worked very closely—albeit remotely, due to the pandemic—with the UWE team to ensure the success of the project. As part of the upgrade project, Actian Professional Services deployed Actian’s Enterprise Monitoring Appliance Plus (EMA+), which provides a single graphical interface for monitoring multiple Ingres installations and servers. EMA+ can be configured to monitor and display a large number of Ingres, operating system, and network data points, while also focusing on all aspects of system availability and recoverability.

Impact #1	The migration to Actian X and Linux has resulted in a more responsive system, according to feedback from many of the student record system’s users—and more than 300 staff members that interact with the system on a near daily basis. The move has also enabled UWE to stop having to support the aging Solaris environment, now that the last mission-critical system has migrated to Linux. This has freed up money and resources that the university can use elsewhere. Moreover, the move to Actian X put the university in a strong position to take advantage of new application and infrastructure options as they evolve. For instance, UWE is considering building a cloud-based analytics platform, and the vector processing and data integration features built into Actian X would make it easy for them to integrate with a cloud data warehouse solution like Actian.

Impact #1

The migration to Actian X and Linux has resulted in a more responsive system, according to feedback from many of the student record system’s users—and more than 300 staff members that interact with the system on a near daily basis. The move has also enabled UWE to stop having to support the aging Solaris environment, now that the last mission-critical system has migrated to Linux. This has freed up money and resources that the university can use elsewhere. Moreover, the move to Actian X put the university in a strong position to take advantage of new application and infrastructure options as they evolve. For instance, UWE is considering building a cloud-based analytics platform, and the vector processing and data integration features built into Actian X would make it easy for them to integrate with a cloud data warehouse solution like Actian.

Benefit #1	The migration has increased application performance for users.
Benefit #2	The university has been able to reduce operating costs associated with infrastructure support.
Benefit #3	The migration has freed up resources that the university can use elsewhere.

Benefit #1

The migration has increased application performance for users.

Benefit #2

The university has been able to reduce operating costs associated with infrastructure support.

Benefit #3

The migration has freed up resources that the university can use elsewhere.

Download PDF Version

Overview

University of Western England Manages Major Migration Amidst Global Pandemic

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit