Amonra

05/10/2024

Amonra provides independent support and professional services around the following technologies:

MariaDB
MySQL
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
Db2
Informix
Cassandra
Enterprise Linux (RH, Oracle, Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky)
Solaris (SPARC & x86)
AIX

We have extensive experience in technologies associated with these product ranges including Galera, InnoDB, Patroni clustering, MySQLRouter, HaProxy, and other backup/recovery and replication software.

We provide remote DBA and system admin services.

Email [email protected] for more information, or visit our website

Specialising in Open Source technologies, all major database engines, infrastructure, networking, virtualisation, HCI, and cloud based implementations

21/10/2022

We are pleased to announce our technology partnership agreement with Galera (Codership Oy). This agreement enhances our position with MariaDB & MySQL in offering scalable and highly-available architectures through their database technologies and reassures our clients of first-class vendor-backed support and consultancy services.

11/07/2022

Amonra IT based in Salford Manchester are pleased to announce their partnership with MariaDB Corporation in providing state of the art technological services based on MariaDB Enterprise Platform, MaxScale, Xpand, and SkySQL

MariaDB Corporation Ab, a core contributor to the MariaDB Server and the developer of the MariaDB Enterprise Platform, MaxScale, Xpand, and SkySQL, today announced that Amonra IT would join them as the UK's first Technology partner for their range of Enterprise class products.

An alliance of Amonra's strong Open Source customer base and the ability to offer true enterprise class software at competitive subscription rates coupled with first class technical services delivery and MariaDB's innovative developments will provide true world class solutions as a progression path for community based open source users. Amonra has the ability to provide a wide range of technical professional services with vast experience in the open source arena.

Gary Waldrom director of Amonra says "This represents a significant change in the strategic direction of Amonra, it is the first time we have partnered directly with a software vendor in order to add value to the product offerings through high class support and professional services. This approach of vendor backed consultancy and support will only have added benefit to our expanding customer base."

Amonra is a MariaDB Technology partner in EMEA.

17/09/2021

Amonra are very pleased to announce that we have moved, our new address is:
Clippers House,
Clippers Quay,
Salford Quays,
M50 3XP

08/09/2021

Patroni Clustering for PostgreSQL

Amonra are proud to have completed a highly available PostgreSQL installation for a major financial institution in Asia, the solution consists of 2-node PostgreSQL instances in each data centre, incorporating 2 data centres, The PostgreSQL was clustered using Patroni in mixed synchronous (local DC) and asynchronous (XDCR) modes, (4-node clusters). This is served by 2 HAProxy servers and overseen by a 3 node etcd cluster for distributed configuration management (incorporating a tiebreak DC).

The above architecture was rolled out to DEV, UAT and Production environments.

27/10/2020

Amonra have recently conducted extensive trials and a Proof of Concept for IBM Db2 Encrytion technologies performed with an array of open source crypto tools and SaaS HSM configurations. The brief was to evaluate the feasibility and potential threats to pkcs #11, pkcs #12 & KMIP encryption of the data at rest in an HADR PureScale deployment of IBM Db2.

After a number of implementations we were able to find the most cost effective solution that met the clients data security requirements.

13/03/2020

Working with our partners Acuma, we have successfully designed and delivered a complete data warehousing solution to the University of Sheffield here in the UK.

The project was a greenfield implementation based on Microsoft SQL Server technologies, SSAS, PowerBI and using Talend Data Services as the ETL tool.

The 18 month engagement saw us take data from a number of sources including the National Students Survey (NSS), Media Sources League Tables, Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and merge this with internal Research Costing tools (Oracle), SAP HR and Tribal SITS Student Lifecycle Management to present a consistent Kimball based model of the business for BI operations, and a selection of Tabular SSAS cubes.

All in all a very enjoyable, and successful project and great to work with our partners Acuma again.

29/10/2019

Recent engagement: A software engineering company headquartered in the UK specialising in geospatial intelligence tools that help mobile operators automate a wide range of business processes: from Test and Measurement to Customer Experience Management.

We identified a “SMACK” stack solution characterised by its ability to Integrate, Automate, Analyse, and Optimise the network information. By doing so, we delivered substantial operational efficiencies and cost savings, as well as increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

SMACK - Spark, Mesos, Akka, Cassandra, Kafka

The technology is to be used by tens of thousands of personnel working for some of the world’s largest mobile network operating groups – and millions of their subscribers. This will operate a global network of regional offices from New York to Kuala Lumpur to support this international customer base.

09/12/2018

Amonra have just completed a very important PostgreSQL 9.5 migration of a financial payments system to Amazon RDS with zero downtime.

The on-premise database was configured to replicate to RDS using Bucardo for application testing then we reversed the Bucardo replication from RDS to on-premise and pointed the application to the new RDS without downtime.

The clients requirements were fully met (master-master was not a consideration for this client as data input had to remain consistent with a defined entry point throughout the testing period.)

The application remained up and running throughout the process without any issues. The client now has their production database in RDS, a replicated copy on-premise and a further WAL replication of this up to an EC2 instance.

11/11/2018

Oracle Will Charge for Java Starting in 2019

Oracle has announced that, effective January 2019, Java SE 8 public updates will no longer be available for "Business, Commercial or Production use" without a commercial license.

The current version of Java - Java SE 9 as well as Java SE 8 - is free and available for redistribution for general purpose computing. Java SE continues to be available under the Oracle Binary Code License (BCL) free of charge.

Java Runtime Environment (JRE) use for embedded devices or use of commercial features may require a license fee from Oracle. Read more about embedded use of Java SE, or contact your local Oracle sales representative to obtain a license.

What should you do now?
In light of Oracle’s recent announcement, companies should begin considering:

How to anticipate the situation?
How many Java installations do we have, where and why?
Are there usages embedded?
Can we replace Java with another technology?
What will the cost be in January 2019?
Oracle suggests running a tool to find Java installations using a Java package called Java Usage Tracker. This will report information like:

The Java versions
Application name
Type (applet, command line, etc).
Location and more
However, the Oracle Java Usage Tracker requires a commercial license – even though it’s included in the installer that comes with the free components.

The safest way to avoid the risk of unexpected software costs is to use an automated Software Asset Management solution. A SAM tool is able to detect, collect, measure, and provide your compliance position.

29/06/2017

Amonra have recently migrated 2 business objects platforms from Solaris to Linux & Windows including a 3.1 to 4.1 upgrade during the process, the CMS database in each case was Oracle which was also migrated and upgraded. Each of the clients presented their own set of unique challenges which goes to prove that there isn't a simple cook-book based approach to this type of migration and experience is an absolute essential if the process is to be successful.