Samsung SDS Cuts Database Costs in Half by Moving from Oracle to MariaDB

About Samsung SDS

Samsung is one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. One of its subsidiary groups, Samsung Data Systems (SDS), provides optimized cloud services for businesses and digital platform-based logistics services. One of the cloud services the SDS team developed was the Knox Portal, an all-in-one workspace for Samsung employees. The Knox Portal is also known as Samsung Groupware.

What does the Samsung SDS team focus on?

In the telecommunications sector, database performance is directly tied to network viability. The Knox Portal has almost half a million users and allows Samsung employees to collaborate better and more efficiently through their dedicated workspace (e.g. messaging, emails, communication, scheduling meetings, receiving and transferring large files, etc.) whether on desktop or mobile given it’s a cloud-based service. The Samsung SDS team focuses on minimizing performance issues in an operational environment and guarantee fast performance when reading and writing data. In order to achieve this, it is critical to have transparent communication between database administrators (DBAs) and developers. For instance, DBAs conduct performance validation for all SQL statements before they are deployed to the operational environment. During this process, if there are performance issues, tuning guides are provided and only the SQL statements that guarantee optimized performance are deployed to the operational environment.

Why did Samsung SDS start looking for a new database for this application?

It started with the need to modernize the Knox Portal by moving to a microservices architecture and open source software. The overall operations and development overhead needed to be modernized.

What database did Samsung SDS use previously?

Samsung SDS decided to migrate away from Oracle and to MariaDB Enterprise Server. Currently, more than 80% of databases for this application have been moved. There are approximately 50 portal services used by employees over the world allowing them to communicate, collaborate, transfer and receive files, schedule meetings, etc. enabling them to be serviced globally. Most of the Samsung SDS databases and services are operated through MariaDB.

What have been the results since moving away from Oracle to MariaDB?

With MariaDB, Samsung SDS has been able to achieve zero downtime upgrades and migration that addresses our business continuity requirements, which includes global real-time data synchronization with change data capture.

Their operating costs have been reduced by more than 50% since migrating away from Oracle and to MariaDB. Furthermore, the migration was carried out without any interruption and the team was able to maintain service continuity and stability for all of customers that are part of the 80 Samsung affiliates around the world.

Why did you choose MariaDB Enterprise Server?

Choosing MariaDB was a great decision for the team as they followed the natural trend of IT and open source. In the past, they were only familiar with Oracle but since using MariaDB, it has allowed the team to expand their capabilities in the workplace. They’ve been able to broaden their perspective on new, emerging database environments.

Additionally, MariaDB demonstrates excellent performance. With guaranteed performance, MariaDB enables Samsung SDS to provide better service to their customers. Lastly, releases and security patches are being transparently disclosed.

As an open source database, its greatest advantage is that it can enhance the depth of work for developers and DBAs. Above all, it can generate greater efficiency at a lower cost compared to commercial databases.