How a Fortune 500 U.S. Bank Modernized Its Mission-Critical Data Infrastructure with Tessell

About the bank

The customer is one of the largest banks in the United States, a Fortune 500 company with more than $200 billion in assets and tens of thousands of employees. It serves millions of customer relationships across multiple states through a nationwide network of branches and ATMs. With annual revenue exceeding $7 billion, the bank delivers comprehensive financial services including retail banking, commercial lending, wealth management, and specialized financing solutions across the East Coast and Midwest.

The challenge: When managed services become unsustainable

The bank faced mounting pressure from two critical mandates: reduce spiraling RDS costs and exit expensive Exadata systems. What they needed wasn't just another managed database service - they needed RDS++ at a better price point.

The Cost gap

As the bank's cloud database footprint expanded, RDS costs escalated unsustainably. The inflexible pricing model penalized scale, infrastructure couldn't be optimized, and budget constraints threatened to limit new digital banking initiatives. The real risk wasn't just operational - it was economic sustainability.

The Feature gap

Beyond cost, RDS fundamentally couldn't deliver what a Fortune 500 bank required:

• No real DR drill capability: The bank needed to conduct quarterly cross-region disaster recovery drills with seamless switchback to the primary region—operationally impossible on RDS, leaving them unable to prove actual recovery readiness

• Restricted administrative control: DBAs lacked the access needed for performance tuning, advanced diagnostics, and internal security standards

• Limited customization: No ability to bring hardened images, configure backup retention for compliance needs, or implement required observability standards

The Exadata exit: No clear path

Simultaneously, the bank was exiting Exadata but faced a dilemma: moving Oracle to traditional cloud replicated high costs without agility, risked losing critical enterprise features (RAC, Data Guard, advanced compression), and offered no unified solution for their entire database estate.

The bottom line: Continuing on RDS meant unsustainable cost escalation and feature limitations. Moving Exadata to traditional cloud meant replacing one expensive platform with another. The bank needed a fundamentally different approach - DBaaS on their own terms.

The solution: RDS++ on Customer Infrastructure

The bank partnered with Tessell to build a comprehensive database platform delivering enterprise control within their own AWS infrastructure.

1. Private, Bank-grade security

The bank established private-only access through AWS PrivateLink, eliminating all public exposure to control plane and management interfaces. All administrative traffic stays within their secure perimeter ensuring compliance and zero external exposure.

2. Dedicated architecture with complete control

The bank deployed Tessell's Virtual Private Tessell (VPT) @ Customer model - a dedicated control plane and data plane exclusively for their workloads within their AWS environment. This gave them complete data sovereignty, bring-your-own keys (BYOK), bring-your-own networks (BYON), bring-your-own hardened images with security agents, and full integration with existing IAM and compliance tools.

3. Enterprise DR that actually works

Working with the bank, Tessell developed comprehensive DR drill capabilities that became a platform differentiator. The bank engineered a five-node production cluster with primary and standby nodes (synchronous replication, automatic failover), plus three DR nodes across regions.

The breakthrough: the bank can now conduct full cross-region DR drills and seamlessly switch back to the original primary region without data loss operationally impossible on RDS. This capability, refined through the bank's requirements, enables quarterly DR drills with a validated 15-minute RPO and full regulatory documentation.

4. True multi-engine platform

Beyond Oracle, the bank deployed Tessell for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server workloads. In fact, the bank now runs more open-source databases on Tessell than Oracle, proving Tessell became their complete enterprise-grade RDS replacement across all engines with consistent capabilities: full DBA access, custom performance tuning, flexible backup policies, and unified governance.

The impact: RDS++ at optimized cost

Full enterprise control restored

DBAs regained complete administrative authority for performance tuning, advanced diagnostics, and security enforcement that RDS restricted. The bank can now bring their own hardened images, encryption keys, network architecture, and security policies—customization impossible in traditional managed services but essential for a Fortune 500 bank.

The transformation

The bank proved that banks don't have to choose between managed services and enterprise control, between features and cost, between agility and governance. By partnering with Tessell, they achieved RDS++ capabilities at optimized costs - more features, better economics, complete control.

A partnership that shaped the product

The bank didn't just adopt Tessell - they helped shape it. Their requirements for seamless cross-region DR drills pushed Tessell to refine platform capabilities that now benefit every customer. When the bank said "we need quarterly DR drills without risk," Tessell built it.