The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is one of the world’s largest and most respected centers for scientific research. Founded in 1954 and located near Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border, CERN was one of Europe’s first joint ventures. Today, it has 20 member states. The organization uses the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments to study fundamental particles and the origin of the universe.

Challenges

• Better support the scientists associated with a CERN research program who selected MySQL as their database.
• Empower users, enabling them to be as self-reliant as possible.
• Minimize complexity and costs for the CERN IT department to support the growing number of MySQL deployments.

Solution

• Delivered a MySQL Database-as-a-Service offering to the CERN employees and the scientists associated with the organization.
• Allowed researchers selecting MySQL for their project to get access to a database instance hosted by the CERN IT department, either from the start or once their application has become critical.
• Implemented the service using Oracle’s server virtualization software, Oracle VM, for increased flexibility and reduced costs.
• Empowered users with a self-service approach, providing them with tools to manage MySQL themselves while handling backups and other basic database administration tasks for them.
• Enabled scientists to rely on MySQL with increased reliability, security and manageability while reducing complexity and minimizing costs.

"The Cloud model has allowed us to deliver a self-service platform to our MySQL users, empowering them while minimizing costs for CERN." Tony Cass, Database Services Group Leader, IT department, CERN.