Client
UniCredit BankWeb-site:
About Client
UniCredit Bank (Ukraine) is a Ukrainian bank with foreign investments created after acquisition of JSCB Ukrsotsbank (1990–) by JSC UniCredit Bank (1997–2014). The two worked under a common brand in the Ukrainian market in 2014–2016. In terms of assets and the retail market share, the bank was among the top ten Ukrainian banks with the largest foreign capital and was a part of UniCredit international group. As of January 1, 2014, the bank’s total assets amounted to UAH 43,057,000,000.
Tasks
Delivery and commissioning of a hardware complex for the Bank’s B2 system and deployment of a backup system based on IBM Tivoli Storage Manager were necessitated by:
- UniCredit Bank entering the retail market
- Opening of new regional locations
- Hardware fleet standardisation requirements
- Growing user base of B2 automated banking system (ABS).
Problems
IT infrastructure modernisation objectives:
- Ensuring compatibility and coordination of business processes
- Maintaining high-level resource performance
- Avoiding issues related to hardware scaling and redundancy
- Enabling standardisation of the solutions selected
To address these issues, appropriate powerful and reliable server hardware was needed, as well as a flexible IT management system.
Criteria
The project was entrusted to SI BIS experts, who developed a solution based on IBM server hardware. The solution fully met the requirements for performance, reliability, scalability, flexibility, and matched corporate standards of UniCredit.
The basic requirements for the future system were determined by the B2 banking system software vendor—CS Ltd.
The first step was to deploy a high-availability cluster system. The system was based on IBM eServer pSeries p520 servers running IBM AIX 5L OS.
IBM High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing (HACMP) software for AIX enabled clustering of up to 32 pSeries servers, as well as support for dynamic cluster reconfiguration—during peak load periods, new servers could be added to the cluster in real time this way.
Each server had its own tasks. The main server ran B2 core banking system and DBMS. The backup server was on cold standby.
To ensure safety of the bank’s main database, IBM DS4300 storage system was chosen.
The solution offered was designed to eliminate any points of failure in the cluster complex. Full redundancy was provided for data links between the server and external disk storage subsystem, as well as for FC switches. In the event of switch or HBA adapter failure, the storage network could still be accessed via a redundant element.
The backup and archiving subsystem were created with an IBM LTO Ultrium 2U Tape Autoloader 3581-F38 equipped with an Ultrium 3 compliant drive and connected via FC interface.
Solutions
IT Infrastructure ModernizationResults
Modernisation of the bank’s IT infrastructure involved the development of a data storage management system. This system was built with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.
Deployment of the solution provided reliable protection of the organization’s data from hardware failures and other errors through storing backup and archive copies in the external storage systems.