Implement a highly scalable Metering Data Management system on OCI using the Hemera platform
The increasing trend of using telemetering to collect data from electricity meters increases the performance requirements that a Metering Data Management (MDM) system must perform, since the distributor's billing, as well as actuation commands, such as cutting and reconnecting, pass directly through this system.
- Ability to integrate different meter models and manufacturers, enabling distributor analysts to always use MDM with the same ease, regardless of the meter analyzed.
- Need for a single integration with legacy systems, for example, billing.
- Capacity to process information from thousands, and even millions, of meters simultaneously.
Architecture
This reference architecture showcases how to work with the Hemera Platform MDM and Oracle Cloud allowing users to take advantage of this tool to implement their MDM Platforms on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
- Daily processing capacity under normal conditions of millions of meters for low, medium and high voltage customers. This aspect covers the day-to-day activities of the MDM, which must have the necessary performance to support the information received daily from the millions of meters in the field, especially on days when such information will be used for billing.
- Capacity to recover or process accumulated messages in eventual cases of unavailability of the telemetering environment. This aspect covers contingency situations, regardless of their cause (IT environment, means of communication, and so on), and the MDM must be able to recover the delay accumulated during the unavailability while continuing with ongoing processing. To achieve this, the maximum combined processing time of measurement information must not exceed 12 hours.
- Iris – System that manages communication
- Hemera – System that manages Measurement
- Meters – Counters of energy measurement variables
- Communication – Mobile (3g, 4g, 5g), Satellite, others
The meters communicate with the Iris system, which in turn makes the call to Hemera, which persists in the Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure.
The following diagram illustrates this reference architecture.
oci-exadata-hemera-arch-oracle.zip
The architecture has the following components:
- Region
An Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region is a localized geographic area that contains one or more data centers, called availability domains. Regions are independent of other regions, and vast distances can separate them (across countries or even continents).
- Availability domains
Availability domains are standalone, independent data centers within a region. The physical resources in each availability domain are isolated from the resources in the other availability domains, which provides fault tolerance. Availability domains don’t share infrastructure such as power or cooling, or the internal availability domain network. So, a failure at one availability domain shouldn't affect the other availability domains in the region.
- Virtual cloud network (VCN) and subnets
A VCN is a customizable, software-defined network that you set up in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region. Like traditional data center networks, VCNs give you control over your network environment. A VCN can have multiple non-overlapping CIDR blocks that you can change after you create the VCN. You can segment a VCN into subnets, which can be scoped to a region or to an availability domain. Each subnet consists of a contiguous range of addresses that don't overlap with the other subnets in the VCN. You can change the size of a subnet after creation. A subnet can be public or private.
- Dynamic routing gateway (DRG)
The DRG is a virtual router that provides a path for private network traffic between VCNs in the same region, between a VCN and a network outside the region, such as a VCN in another Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region, an on-premises network, or a network in another cloud provider.
- FastConnect
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect provides an easy way to create a dedicated, private connection between your data center and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. FastConnect provides higher-bandwidth options and a more reliable networking experience when compared with internet-based connections.
- Audit
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Audit service automatically records calls to all supported Oracle Cloud Infrastructure public application programming interface (API) endpoints as log events. Currently, all services support logging by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Audit.
- Compute
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute service enables you to provision and manage compute hosts in the cloud. You can launch compute instances with shapes that meet your resource requirements for CPU, memory, network bandwidth, and storage. After creating a compute instance, you can access it securely, restart it, attach and detach volumes, and terminate it when you no longer need it.
- Service gateway
The service gateway provides access from a VCN to other services, such as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage. The traffic from the VCN to the Oracle service travels over the Oracle network fabric and does not traverse the internet.
- Exadata Database Service
Oracle Exadata Database Service enables you to leverage the power of Exadata in the cloud. You can provision flexible Exadata X8M and X9M systems that allow you to add database compute servers and storage servers to your system as your needs grow. Exadata X8M and X9M systems offer RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) networking for high bandwidth and low latency, persistent memory (PMEM) modules, and intelligent Exadata software. You can provision Exadata X8M and X9M systems by using a shape that's equivalent to a quarter-rack X8 and X9M system, and then add database and storage servers at any time after provisioning.
Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure provides Oracle Exadata Database Machine as a service in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) data center. The Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure instance is a virtual machine (VM) cluster that resides on Exadata racks in an OCI region.
Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer provides Oracle Exadata Database Service that is hosted in your data center.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the access control plane for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Oracle Cloud Applications. The IAM API and the user interface enable you to manage identity domains and the resources within the identity domain. Each OCI IAM identity domain represents a standalone identity and access management solution or a different user population.
- Object storage
Object storage provides quick access to large amounts of structured and unstructured data of any content type, including database backups, analytic data, and rich content such as images and videos. You can safely and securely store and then retrieve data directly from the internet or from within the cloud platform. You can scale storage without experiencing any degradation in performance or service reliability. Use standard storage for "hot" storage that you need to access quickly, immediately, and frequently. Use archive storage for "cold" storage that you retain for long periods of time and seldom or rarely access.
Considerations
Consider the following points when deploying this reference architecture.
- Performance
Not limited to these values, the tests proved Hemera's ability to process messages from 33.8 million meters and 576 million messages per day, that is 24 million messages per hour.
- Security
By default, Oracle Cloud provides encryption of all databases running on Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure. For extra security, you can use Data Safe to understand data sensitivity, evaluate data risks, mask sensitive data, implement and monitor security controls, assess user security, monitor user activity, and so on.
- Availability
Tests that simulated a possible unavailability of the environment indicated the high recovery capacity of message processing, that is, within 12 hours processing returns to normal.