Kyiv, Ukraine |  Banks and insurance |  2016 |  FUIB |  Solution: IT Infrastructure Modernization

Client

FUIB
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About Client

PJSC First Ukrainian International Bank (FUIB) is one of the ten largest Ukrainian banks. The bank’s activities are focused on commercial, retail, and investment banking operations. The All-Ukrainian regional network of FUIB includes 160 points of sales; the bank serves 1,500,000 private and over 20,000 corporate clients. FUIB is a member of the united ATM network Radius with 4,000 ATMs together with partner banks throughout Ukraine. FUIB is a member of System Capital Management—the largest financial and industrial group in Ukraine.

Tasks

Supply and modernization of storage systems for PJSC FUIB. 

DSS performance improvement, correction of errors in the existing system, storage system operation costs reduction, data centre space optimisation and assurance of trouble-free operation of the bank’s customer service system in 24/7 mode.

Problems

Because of the lack of a unified concept for IT infrastructure development, and the existing distributed systems (unified, horizontally scalable NetApp FAS8080 storage system, IBM System Storage DS8800 disk storage for business applications, IBM DS5000 storage for transaction applications), which require high network bandwidth, the following problems arose:

  • Difficulties in management of distributed hardware fleet
  • Critical mass of obsolete hardware
  • Insufficient performance of existing systems
  • Extended support required for legacy storage systems
  • Inadequate use of available space in the data centre
  • No storage system-level performance balancing between the primary and backup platforms
  • Restrictions on the available power consumption

It was impossible to create a centralised storage system for PJSC FUIB without immersing ourselves into the customer’s IT environment. It was done in several stages: a study of needs, an audit of existing infrastructure, selection of the hardware meeting the customer’s business objectives, analysis of new hardware’s compatibility with the existing bank systems. At the initial stages of the project, it became obvious that the lack of data storage system development concept makes it impossible to monitor critical applications. And the requirements of the customer’s business dictated specific parameters for the future IT infrastructure: the critical business applications needed to work flawlessly.

Criteria

During preparation of ABS storage systems performance optimisation solution, NetApp AFF8040, NetApp EF560, EMC Unity 400, EMC VMAX 100k, IBM AllFlash 900, IBM Storwize V7000 were considered. To ensure compatibility of the new hardware with existing bank systems and their versions, two EMC VMAX 100k hybrid DSS were chosen for the main and backup platforms.

In addition to the high performance and reliability, EMC VMAX 100k system tolerated lower-cost SAS drives for storing “cold” data in combination with SSD drives for storing “hot” data.

This enables the creation of a cluster “stretched” between two data centres with a minimum number of optical channels. The bank will thus be able to reduce system downtime to zero in the event of an accident in one of the data centres.

 

Solutions

IT Infrastructure Modernization

Advantages

Implementation of the new system has reduced the cost per 1 IOPS and 1 TB for critical services, as well as that per 1 TB of “warm” and “cold” data levels, while maintaining the performance.

The fixed cost of expanding both hot and cold data levels enabled us to make a fast prediction as to the cost of the required expansion in the case of a new service deployment. SRDF Metro technology saves the bank’s funds by using Active/Active geographically distributed data storage system. Protect Point technology minimizes the time needed to restore backup data stored on VTL EMC DataDomain while extending the “hot” storage level lifespan.

If necessary, each system can be scaled up to 1440 disks with proper scaling of Host ports number, cache memory, and DSS controllers.

Results

The first stage resulted in the terms of reference for supply and deployment of an EMC DSS-based disaster recovery solution, data migration in the shortest time possible without affecting the critical bank services and the creation of a transparent system for calculating costs related to disk capacity expansion.

In addition, the following tasks were indicated:

  • Reduction of the time needed to close the operational banking day
  • Ensuring disaster tolerance of core bank applications and services
  • Reduction of data storage costs through data distribution between levels
  • Reduce space occupied in the data centre
  • Optimisation of data centre’s power consumption
  • Upgrade of the bank’s systems with performance boost in mind

Stage two. System modernization.

After all, Flash DSS for the automated banking system were supplied in 2016, the second stage of the project was initiated in 2017 to revamp the storage system and improve its most problematic areas—capacity, speed, and resilience. The data was migrated from legacy storage systems to the new EMC DSS.

Stage three. Deployment.

Hardware was Installed, connected, and configured in the backup and the main data centres with a rapid data migration to follow— all with critical banking services remaining online. The systems were tested for performance.

All the objectives under the PJSC FUIB comprehensive project for the supply and modernisation of data storage systems, were completed and the following results achieved:

  • The system’s resilience increased greatly
  • The system’s speed and performance improved
  • The space occupied in the data centre was optimised
  • Power consumption of the hardware in the data centre was reduced

This way, the existing infrastructure can be fully leveraged, and the required data storage performance ensured to run IT services the business requires.