European Registry of Internet Domain Names Achieves Nearly 100% Availability for Domain Registration Database
 
 

European Registry of Internet Domain Names Achieves Nearly 100% Availability for Domain Registration Database

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European Registry of Internet Domain Names (EURid) is a not-for-profit organization that manages the .eu top-level internet domain under contract to the European Commission. EURid employees continuously provide online and telephone support in all official European Union (EU) languages to approximately 900 accredited registrars that offer .eu domain registration services and manage the more than 3.5 million .eu domain names.

Since managing data, such as configuration settings for name servers, logs from transactions with registrars, availability of domain names, and owners of domain names is EURid’s core business, the organization wanted a database infrastructure that was robust and flexible and could deliver both high performance and high availability. To meet its goals, EURid deployed Oracle Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters on Oracle Solaris, atop Oracle’s SPARC Enterprise M9000 server.

The Oracle solution enabled EURid to provide 900 accredited registrars around the world with uninterrupted access to domain-name registration data and customer information at all times. Finally, the highly flexible and scalable solution provided EURid with the performance and throughput needed to handle more than 20,000 daily transactions, such as domain-name registrations and customer service contacts.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from European Registry of Internet Domain Names

  • “Thanks to Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Solaris, and Oracle’s SPARC Enterprise M9000 Server, we do not have to worry about hardware negatively impacting the availability of our business-critical domain-name database.” – Peter Janssen, Technical Manager, European Registry of Internet Domain Names

  • Provide failover capabilities that ensure core applications, such as the registration platform that enables registrars to register domain names and organizations to continue running in the event of a server failure or major natural disaster
  • Implement a robust hardware solution that is capable of handling high data volume and scaling for future growth
  • Achieve near-100% availability for the database that stores internet domain-name server information, registrar information, customer contact details, billing information, and more, to ensure that the 900 accredited registrars around the world can access information, 24/7
  • Sustain performance of a growing database that stores customer and internet domain-name information for registrars worldwide and manages more than 20,000 daily transactions
  • Ensure ability to handle peak periods, such as the first few days of new, specific, internet domain-name registration launch, during which customers can register new domain names

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Implemented Oracle Real Application Clusters in two separate data centers in Amsterdam and Brussels, with one that is replicated in an Oracle Data Guard stand-by set-up, ensuring business continuity in case of a failure or natural disaster
  • Implemented Oracle’s SPARC Enterprise M9000 server running Oracle Solaris together with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage 7420 to handle more than 20,000 daily transactions, such as registrations or domain name transfers, and contacts with registrars and to deliver massive storage scalability via the storage appliance’s raw capacity of 100 terabytes per site
  • Prevented database inaccessibility when a recent hardware failure occurred through faulty human intervention
  • Provided 900 accredited registrars with uninterrupted access to internet domain-name registration data and customer data at all times, thanks to the new high availability data infrastructure built on Oracle Real Application Clusters
  • Enabled EURid to extend the application clusters in both data centers when the maximum performance level is reached, so the organization can scale the domain-name database for future growth

Partner

Uptime Technologies helped EURid during every step of the project—from implementation through fine tuning—and is also responsible for continued maintenance of Oracle Real Application Clusters. 

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