Key Takeaways:
- Flexible Open Source Environment, powered by EDB's Postgres Enterprise Manager (PEM) and a suite of EDB tools.
- Seamless Deployment and Maintenance by leveraging EDB consultation services to deploy and configure the Postgres solution and maintain database performance.
- The Ministry achieved unprecedented levels of High Availability through the implementation of EDB Failover Manager.
- Knowledge Enrichment through EDB's comprehensive training.
- Prevented outages and incidents thanks to the proactive monitoring and engagement of the team along with relevant suggested optimizations.
Products:
Industry
- Tourism
About The Ministry of Tourism
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Tourism was founded in 2020, following the opening of Saudi Arabia to international tourists in 2019. The Ministry spearheads the Kingdom’s Vision to bring Saudi tourism to the forefront. Its endeavors align with the Kingdom's ambitious goals, aiming to create 1 million jobs for its citizens, enable accelerated and sustainable growth with future-focused policies, investments, and talent development guided by data, receive 100 million tourism visits by 2030, and amplify the sector's GDP contribution from 3% to 10%. In doing so, the Ministry of Tourism issues licenses and classifications for tourism activities and creates and approves tourist visa regulations.
Challenges
To help the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Tourism Ecosystem grow, the Ministry of Tourism sought an open-source environment with exceptional availability. The DTIT (Digital Transformation and Information technology ) at the Ministry of Tourism realized that this is imperative for efficiently processing thousands of electronic documents and perform other data-driven tasks related to tourism and economic growth and accelerating achievement of the Kingdom's strategic objectives.
Solution
By partnering with EDB, the Ministry was able to implement Postgres in a week. EDB’s consultation Service enabled the databases team to work closely with EDB’s engineer, who helped them set up their Postgres environment from scratch with high availability. EDB assisted them in deploying and configuring Postgres Enterprise Manager (PEM) and EDB Failover Manager (EFM). Barman (Backup and Recovery Manager) was also deployed to back up their database and prevent data loss.
EDB ensured the synchronization of the database and employed a checklist to confirm the correctness of all configurations. In addition to furnishing comprehensive documentation and best practices for the implementation, EDB conducted training for the Ministry's database team, imparting their expertise in Postgres.
"We've had an excellent experience with EDB and the consultation team. We collaborated closely to ensure seamless and anticipated operations.”
- Muayad Alammar,- Muayad Alammar, Head of Database Management at Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Tourism
Results
Upon implementing their enterprise-level PostgreSQL solution, the Ministry's database team experienced numerous performance enhancements and the introduction of new functionalities. They particularly valued the user-friendly graphical interface of EDB's high-availability Failover Manager tool and how it monitored their Postgres service, swiftly detecting database failures. The leader of the database team pointed out that the Failover Manager played a crucial role in evading the split-brain scenario, a potential issue in high-availability databases where two previously synchronized datasets lose their syncing capability during a failover event.
The proactive reporting on resource utilization along with suggested optimization has been a valuable source for the MoT and allowed them to identify issues before they have any effect on the business. The MoT development team followed up on our improvement recommendations and the offending queries were fixed before any further impact was felt.
At different times there were unexpected network issues that had a knock on effect on the database replication - having the reassurance of the team monitoring the health of their databases 24/7 and thanks to the quick reaction, a potential production downtime was prevented. A similar reassurance is granted by proactively identifying and suggesting action for other issues before they become visible in production which has enabled MoT to have no outage or major incidents since they joined forces with EDB.
Tourism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is flourishing, achieving a prominent rank among the most popular destinations. This distinction is supported by report of the World Tourism Organization, and the Travel and Tourism Development Index issued by the World Economic Forum. The database team employs EDB Postgres to efficiently process information necessary for the evaluation of numerous daily requests, facilitation of travel procedures, and the advancement of tourism-related activities.
The IT Operations Department at the Ministry of Tourism was honored with the inaugural Innovator Spotlight, Trailblazer Award from EDB. This prestigious recognition celebrates individuals who demonstrate innovation in their use of Postgres, striving to elevate EDB customer experience not only within their own organizations but also across the broader Postgres community.
"We extend our gratitude to EDB for this distinguished recognition! We are elated to receive this award and take immense pride in having our hard work and dedication to Postgres and open source acknowledged."
– IT Operations of the Ministry of Tourism
Future
The Ministry of Tourism has leveraged their migration to EDB Postgres as a benchmark for other projects, exemplifying how various applications can thrive successfully within the Postgres framework. Their migration to EDB Postgres has not only paved a clear pathway for supporting other applications but also has served as a guiding light for the implementation of open-source solutions.
The DTIT is diligently working to expand the use of Postgres within the Ministry of Tourism. Recognizing the integral role of Postgres, DTIT acknowledges its significance in accelerating business operations and aligning with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 – a vision aimed at transforming the Kingdom into a sustainable and diversified economy. With the combined capabilities of EDB and Postgres, the Ministry finds itself empowered to scale up and innovate in order to meet the dynamic demands of tourism initiatives, thus boosting the Kingdom’s prominent prestige on the global tourism map.