Managed Oracle Database Service (MODS) Highend Overview

Database Cloud Offering by Swisscom

The cloud-based database from Switzerland for Switzerland. The customer gets access to the Swisscom cloud, the 'Enterprise Service Cloud', with the highest possible security standard.

Main benefits:

• Security Standard with real Swissness
• Reliability
• Low administrative costs and licensing
• Scalability

 

Architecture Overview

The MODS Highend product is a fully automated and managed database service running on State-Of-The-Art hardware and software: Oracle Exadata Database Machines to host the databases and the Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliances (ZDLRA) for the database backup solution. Exadata and ZDLRA are the flagship of Oracle Engineered Systems.

The database implementation involves:

• the virtualization technology of Oracle VM to manage the database nodes
• the Oracle RDBMS software in the 'Enterprise Edition'
• the Oracle Multitenant technology for the database consolidation and isolation.

The following picture shows the MODS architecture with the orchestration layer on the top and Oracle platform layer below:

 

MODS Highend Services

With MODS Highend the customer gets a pluggable database (PDB) on top of a managed container database (CDB). The customer has administrative privileges on the PDB. The CDB and the underlying OS is managed by Swisscom. Due to strong isolation requirements, no access to the OS, and only very limited read access to the CDB is provided.

MODS Highend can be used with Oracle Enterprise Edition (EE). The service is available with two different plans:

• BASIC Plan: Cluster Database RAC with 2 nodes - this service is deployed in one data center only
• ADVANCED Plan: Primary/Standby database configuration with Data Guard - the data is replicated to a second data center in order to provide higher data and service availability.

Basic Services

The database platform:

• Administration, operation and lifecycle of the database platform
• Further development of the service and service features
• Full integration into the Swisscom Cloud (API, portal, connectivity)

The Oracle database:

• Automatic provision of Oracle databases (CDB/PDB ready)
• Scalable allocated resources (vCPU & RAM)
• Allocation- and usage-based billing (pay-as-you-go)
• Licensing through BYOL (bring your own licence)
• Monitoring, maintenance and troubleshooting with support either in office hours only or 24/7

Specific Highend Services:

• High End Managed Oracle DB offers a solution for high-performing database requirements such as DWH or core applications, particularly suitable for RAC and Exadata architectures
• 99.9% availability and Oracle’s suggested MAA (Maximum Availability Architecture) are available with this option
• High End Storage, optimized by the Exadata Storage Server Software
• Triple redundancy (ASM High Redundancy) is provided
• At the higher service level – Advanced – a Data Guard is used to store data in a second data centre, providing six-fold data redundancy

Optional Services:

Backup on Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance

• The database is protected by Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN)
• Backups are stored redundantly at two data centre locations
• PIT (Point in Time) Restore is available for 11 days

 

Data Centers in Switzerland

"The cloud-based Oracle database from Switzerland for Switzerland"

• All Data Centers are located in Switzerland
• The platform is operated and managed by Swiss-based experts
• The systems are located in geo-redundant Swisscom Data Centers

 

Cloud Integration with Automation and Orchestration

The MODS platform is fully integrated in the Swisscom 'Enterprise Service Cloud' and all processes tend to be automated at all levels of the stack:

• Cloud portal integrated and automated with Vmware tools (vRA, vRO)
• Cloud platform provisioning and management with:
  • Open Service Broker API
  • RedHat Ansible
  • Jenkins
• Database platform virtualization with Oracle VM
• Oracle Database with Multitenant