Introduction
Etraveli, a leading e-commerce travel group, serves 12 million customers per year. With travelers on five continents comparing and booking travel options through 21 Etraveli-owned brands, the company requires a high availability database that provides maximum uptime and quick, reliable backups.
Etraveli previously used the Community version of the MySQL open source relational database management system to support and run their core system-several applications powering online customer activity like flight bookings and metadata searches for inexpensive travel. The 5 databases underlying those applications store everything from flight reservations to the actual tickets sent on to customers. They are the most critical part of Etraveli's IT infrastructure-any database downtime means the company can't conduct business.
In 2014, Etraveli upgraded to MySQL Enterprise Edition to improve database stability and uptime, streamline backup and restore, and better monitor the health of the database underpinning its critical applications.
Business Challenges & Goals
- Ensure high availability of the company's database, which is the foundation for critical applications including ticket sales and delivery to customers around the world
- Reduce the time and effort needed to realize full database backups-performed twice per week for 5 databases storing 3 terabytes of business information-from several days to just hours
- Reduce the time needed to restore the database from a full day to a few hours, while also decreasing manual work around backup and restore functions
- Leverage more database monitoring capabilities to ensure high availability of core applications
- Gain access to professional database support if needed to minimize risks and ensure business continuity
Business Results & Metrics
- Reduced the time required to perform a complete backup to just 2 hours with MySQL Enterprise Backup 4.1, with restore operations taking about the same time-ensuring that Etraveli can provide continuous ticket sales and delivery services to customers, while freeing IT staff for more strategic tasks
- Gained the ability to run fast incremental backups on a daily basis-within 2 minutes instead of 40 minutes as previously-and 2 full database backups per week-one backup for each data center-without putting a strain on the company's IT staff
- Gained access to 24/7 support in the event of a problem with a database or the backup and restore process, minimizing the risk of system outages that would bring Etraveli's ticket sales and delivery to a halt
- Achieved high availability, providing a reliable booking experience for 12 million customers per year who demand accurate travel information, bookings, and ticket delivery-instantly
- Improved visibility and controlover the performance and stability of MySQL database instances through notifications and alerts from MySQL Enterprise Monitor 4.0, helping IT staff to maintain high availability of all databases
- Strengthened the ability to align Etraveli's product roadmap with MySQL Enterprise Edition roadmap through periodic reviews realized together with Oracle Premier Support, while also gaining access to professional MySQL database support
Why MySQL Enterprise Edition
"Fast backup and restore and top-notch support were our key criteria, besides looking for a database that fulfills our requirements at the best price-performance ratio. Under those conditions, nothing beats the combination of MySQL Enterprise Edition with MySQL Enterprise Backup. We receive great support for it from Oracle Premier Support, right up to discussing our respective product roadmaps. And we are planning to expand our MySQL environment with InnoDB cluster in the near future to achieve a system availability of five nines," Axel Wiberg said.
To learn more about Etraveli, visit www.etraveli.com.