Learn how we moved from an old-school, relational database to MongoDB Atlas in the cloud and reduced our costs and headaches along the way.

1. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company – Milwaukee, WI
A MongoDB Journey.....
Kurt Schwanz
Liz Kegel
10.28.2019

2. Itinerary
WHO IS NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL AND CONTENT SERVICES
APPLICATION OVERVIEW
OUR JOURNEY TO ATLAS
INSIGHTS
Q&A
2

3. 3
Show of Hands

4. Who is Northwestern Mutual?
4

5. Revenue $28.5 billion
#104 on FORTUNE 500
9,000+ Financial
Professionals
5,900+ Employees
Headquartered in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Begun in 1857, Northwestern Mutual
is a Fortune 500 company
with more than 4.5M clients.
Figures as of Dec. 31, 2018, unless otherwise noted

6. Investing In Innovation
Northwestern Mutual Data Science
Institute - a $40 million partnership
to attract and develop talent
and advance the power of data

7. Who Are We?
7

8. • Support multiple tools and content
repositories.
– 500M+ Documents under management
– 50+ Business Areas
– 1M+ users when we include our field
representatives and clients
• Follow a DevOps practice where we
support the full stack of our applications.
8
Content Services
TO BE THE “GO-TO” SOURCE FOR
HOW THE COMPANY INTERACTS
WITH ITS CONTENT
THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE - CONTENT SERVICES

9. The Journey Begins
“The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” -Lau Tzu
9

10. 10
A Quest for Consolidation
Pain points:
• Performance
• Silos / User Experience
• Scalability

11. 11
What is Access Content Anywhere (ACA)
Central Hub
Secure & Compliant
Content Life Cycle
Collaboration

12. • Build or Buy?
• Researched solutions led to the selection of
Nuxeo 3rd party framework and choice of
MongoDB.
– Schema flexibility
– Scalability
• Direction to move to the cloud aided by digital
transformation.
12
The Fork in the Road..

13. 13
Access Content Anywhere – Conceptual Overview
Applications
Cloud Object
Business
Document Stores
On Premise
Business
Document Stores
Third Party
Business
Document Stores
Access Content Anywhere Platform
Search Retrieve Add Update

14. 14
The Landscape
Technology Transformation and ”Re-tooling”
brought new ways of working and challenges
to the team.
• Navigating digital transformation
across the organization.
• IaaS pattern
• Deploying infrastructure as code was new to
the team and company.
• Needed to learn, deploy, and become proficient
with the new ACA Platform.

15. 15
The Journey Ahead
Destination 1
Self-Managed
MongoDB
Destination 2
Interim
Final
Destination
Atlas

16. 16
And We Are Off!
Destination 1
Self -Managed
MongoDB

17. 17
Leg 1 of the Journey – MongoDB IaaS Deployment
ACA Platform
MongoDB
Supporting
Components
Content Application Platform
Ops Manager
Number of VMs
4 OpsMgr x 2 env = 8
TOTAL support hrs per
quarter = 100
TOTAL = 20
TestDev Stage ProdNon-Prod Prod
3 MongoDB x 4 env = 12
+
5 hours per VM
x

18. • Allow time for organizational change.
• Self-Managed MongoDB requires tuning and you
need to have the right resources.
• Implement SSL from the start. Retro-fitting is
trickier.
• Validating your backup and restore process and
failover is crucial.
• Leverage MongoDB Professional Services.
18
Leg 1 – Self Managed
MongoDB - Insights

19. 19
The Journey Continues
Destination 1
Self-Managed
MongoDB
Destination 2
Interim
Final
Destination
Atlas

20. Enterprise
Data Services
20
Leg 2 of the Journey – MongoDB OpsMgr Data as a Service Transition
ACA Platform – Content Services
MongoDB
Supporting
Components
Content Application Platform
Ops
Manager
Number of VMs
Dev Test Stage Prod
TOTAL = 12
3 MongoDB x 4 env = 12
0 OpsMgr x 2 env = 0
+
5 hours per VM
x
TOTAL support hrs. per
quarter = 60

21. • If you have a centralized data services function
leverage it.
• It can take time for organizations to accept NoSQL
databases and be willing to bring under a shared
services model.
• Moving from one OpsMgr to another is relatively
simple.
21
Leg 2 - Interim State -
Insights

22. 22
Are We There Yet?
Destination 1
Self-Managed
MongoDB
Destination 2
Interim
Final
Destination
Atlas

23. ATLAS....T
The Fellowship of the Ring
23

24. • Decision coincided with an upgrade of the 3rd party
Content Services framework requiring a newer version
of MongoDB.
• SaaS solutions were becoming accepted.
• DevOps team could focus on new development instead
of support.
• Support for multiple Availability Zones and improved
backup and restore capabilities.
• MongoDB had earned our trust.
24
Why Atlas

25. z
ATLAS
25
Leg 3 of the Journey – Fully Implemented Atlas
ACA Platform – Content Services
MongoDB
Supporting
Components
Content Application
Platform
TOTAL support hours
per quarter = 0
Number of VMs
0

26. 26
How Did We Get There?
MongoMirror was used to migrate our existing data to
Atlas
• Set up options were straightforward
• Fear and trepidation were unfounded
• Very pleased with the speed of the migration
– 63 Million documents, 81 GB database took 3.5 hours
• Thanks to oplog-tail feature, no downtime was
experienced.
Performance Testing
• Response times were the same (and better for some
tests) than our IaaS infrastructure.

27. Authentication
• LDAP was not an option for our enterprise
• Needed to work through and document
acceptable compensating controls.
• Waiting for MongoDB to release Federated
Identity Management and SSO!
Internal Constraints
• Security reviews and sign-off took longer than
anticipated.
27
Speed Bumps Are Unavoidable

28. Understand your enterprise security posture before
jumping in.
• Know your data classifications and applicable
regulations
• Understand your firewall considerations
and permissions
• Authentication
Mongo-Mirror is your friend for data migration!
Performance Testing is a given.
Leverage MongoDB Support with questions.
28
Leg 3 – MongoDB Atlas
Insights

29. 29
You Have Arrived at Your Final Destination
Destination 1
Self-Managed
MongoDB
Destination 2
Interim
Final
Destination
Atlas

30. As One Journey Ends...
A New One Begins
The Fellowship of the Ring
30

31. • Is your organization open to managed
database offerings?
• Do you have the skill sets and capacity
in house to self-support MongoDB?
• Do you have a need for multiple
Availability Zone coverage for your data
and backups?
• Organizational change takes time.
• Mongo Mirror is your friend.
• Leverage MongoDB Support
31
Souvenirs

32. Questions?
32