How We Made the Move to MariaDB at FNI

1. FNI going MariaDB
WILLIAM WOOD
FINANCIAL NETWORK

2. TOPICS
• Drivers for Change
• Considerations in selecting a new DBMS
• Making the Decision
• Database Level Considerations
• Application Level Considerations
• Defining a Roadmap for Success
• Where we are now
• Evolution
• Conclusion: QA and Open forum

3. Striving to assist our customers in a complex and changing
financial world by pairing industry knowledge with
high-quality solutions that increase their efficiency,
propagates innovation, and empowers them to make faster
and more reliable credit decisions.
It’s what we do.

4. About FNI
• Multi-tenant SaaS company, Founded 1983
• Provides Credit strategy and loan origination services for
multiple types of consumer financing products
• Lending business fundamentals remain similar over 30 +
years, but technology evolved rapidly. FNI began with
custom EEPROMS and Sharp 10-key devices
• Turnkey or Highly Customized services
• Standardization and Time to Market

5. Drivers for Change
• Costs
– Support/licensing
– Scalability
• New FNI Product
– For us it was not just about changing our DBMS
• Our approach
• Our customer base
• Our product offering
• Our development process and tools
• We effectually had to reinvent FNI to move forward

6. Considerations for a DBMS
• Key Considerations in our solution search:
– High volume/high load 24/7/365
– Stable with failover capabilities
– Hardware agnostic
– Scalable
– PCI Requirements
• Secure network communications
• Encryption at rest
– Cost effective

7. Current Architecture
• 2 node Clusters
– 1 Cluster for DEV/TEST
– 1 Cluster for Production
• Software Licensing
– By Core
– Use some archaic methodology

8. Costs
• Initial impact
– Astronomical
– Fiscal responsibility
– CDB and another island
• Ongoing impact
– Renewal and Support
– Cost effectiveness

9. Considerations
• Key Requirements
– Fast and Reliable
– Hardware Agnostic and Scalable
– Secure and PCI DSS Compliant
• Encryption
– Data at rest
– Data in transit

10. Making the Decision
• Looked at several different solutions
– All seemed to be the same costs
• Started looking at Open Source Solutions
• 2015 MariaDB announced 10.1 with Encryption
– Perfect timing
– It fit our model
– December 2015 FNI Chose MariaDB

11. Database Considerations
• New Architecture
• Learning Curve
– MariaDB Onsite Training
• Vender specific code migration
– Triggers, Stored Procedures, and functions
• Moving Data Across Platforms
• End Users

12. • Enact Standardized Practices for Legacy Customers
– Reporting Solutions
– Archiving
– Electron Data Warehousing
• Improving Legacy Code and Processes
Using Change as a Catalyst

13. Application Side
• Code Migration to a New DBMS
– Vender Specific
• Best Path Discovery
– Time constraints
• Developer Training

14. Using Change as a Catalyst
• Enacting Standards and Process
• Existing Code Re-use for Processing
• Becoming Database Agnostic
– Converts Oracle Specific to SQL-99
– Virtually any DBMS

15. Roadmap
• Proof of Concept
– Simple MariaDB Replication Setup
– Choose Customer
• Moving Forward
– More Robust/Complex MariaDB Deployment
– Live Production Customer(s)
– Offload Processing to Replication Nodes
– Expanded MariaDB Footprint

16. Where We Are Now
• 6 Databases in Production
• 64 Databases in Test
• Billable Production Transactions
– To Date for 2018: 921,899
– 2017 MariaDB accounted for 5%
– 2018 MariaDB has accounted for 42%

17. MariaDB Footprint
• 2 Galera Clusters
– 3 Node Multi-Master Setup
• Maxscale
• Replication Nodes
– Offload Processing
• Backups
• Reporting

18. Evolution
• Leveraging MariaDB Further
– Onsite Footprint Gains
– MariaDB Tools and Utilities
• Auditing Plugin
• Column Store
• Continued Standardization
– Code Base
– Database

19. Next Steps
• Continued Improvement of FNI Product Offerings
• Solution Virtualization
• Cloud Footprint
• Reduction in Overhead
• Continued Partnership with MariaDB

20. Conclusion
• Benefits of Leveraging MariaDB
– Cost Effective
– Scalability
– Usability
– Support

21. Open Discussion/Q and A
William Wood
wwood@fni-stl.com

22. Striving to assist our customers in a complex and changing
financial world by pairing industry knowledge with
high-quality solutions that increase their efficiency,
propagates innovation, and empowers them to make faster
and more reliable credit decisions.
It’s what we do.

23. Thank you!