IBMXIV Storage Systems
Banking
Case Study
ubank invests insimplicity as it scales itsenterprise storage
A leading bank puts its money to work with IBMservers and storage
Overview
The need
ubank (formerly known as Teba Bank)needed to refresh its core banking envi-ronment to support annual growth of40 percent in data volumes whiledelivering very fast response times tointernal and external customers.
The solution
ubank migrated its core banking appli-cation to IBM
®
Power
®
595 serverswith SAN storage from IBMXIV
®
. Thebank used the built-in XIV data migra-tion tool to map data to three IBMXIVStorage Systems, each with 27 TBcapacity.
The benefit
High-speed deployment enabled thebank to meet a tight rollout deadline,and the XIV solution cut the cost ofmanaging storage at ubank in half. Thebank has also reduced run time forbatch processing and backups by afactor of four.
With deposits of over ZAR 3billion (US$ 400 million), ubank (formerly known as Teba Bank) is the ninth-largest bank in South Africa by assets. Founded in 1975. ubank has grown from Teba Bank,leveraging a proud heritage serving mineworkers and growing to servethe people of Southern Africa. ubank prides itself on having an essencedrawn from real, spirited partnerships, and aims to build as it growsand to nurture its legacy of being a home-grown South African institu-tion, a truly community-owned bank held in a Trust for the benefit of its customers and the upliftment of their communities. Today, ubank has 106branches in South Africa and 53agencies in neighboring coun-tries. The bank is focused on increasing its distribution channels toensure accessibility for its target communities, aiming to be the work-ers’ bank of choice for South Africa. ubank is aggressively pursuing atwo-pronged growth strategy: first, a large expansion of its footprintacross southern Africa; and second, starting up a broader financialservices group, partly through corporate acquisition. Marius Bosman, CTO and CIO, comments: “We wanted a new ITfoundation that would support our growth and enable us to competemore effectively against the bigger banks in our region. We also wanted to set up the IT function as a distinct service company tosupport the other companies in the group—and possibly externalorganizations at a later date.”
Driving the business with fast response times
To gain the flexibility and scalability it required to fulfill its expansionplans, ubank needed to migrate to the latest version of its OracleFLEXCUBE Core Banking software, but its existing infrastructurelacked the required compute power and storage capacity to make themove to a more powerful application solution.“We have very high demands in terms of application response time,”comments Bosman. “Our branches are very busy, and our tellers expectend-to-end response times as low as 300 milliseconds.”
2
IBMXIV Storage Systems
Banking
Case Study
“XIV was absolutely theright choice: We needed the fast performance of the XIV system to beable to complete the FLEXCUBE migrationwithin our targeted deadline.”
—Marius Bosman, CTO and CIO, ubank
To find a solution capable of meeting these extreme performancedemands, ubank ran an extensive procurement exercise. Afterconsidering offers from a number of vendors, ubank opted forIBMPower 595 servers running IBMAIX for the FLEXCUBE appli-cation, with IBMXIV Storage Systems for data storage.“When we first heard about IBMXIV, we were quite skeptical,” says Anton Giacometti, Head of Infrastructure, ubank. “We visited the localIBMInnovation Center and they took us through the XIV conceptstep by step. At that point, we realized that the XIV solution couldfacilitate the paradigm shift we needed to make in our storage toachieve our goals.”Bosman adds, “IBMgave us confidence that we could partner tohandle the potential risk together and we went straight into a testenvironment. On the storage side, XIV was absolutely the right choice: We needed the fast performance of the XIV system to run the FLEX-CUBE application, and with the built-in migration utility we were ableto meet our targeted deadline and minimize downtime and costs at thesame time.”
Migrating without downtime
Working with IBMand IBMBusiness Partner Datacentrix, ubank migrated its existing core banking application from HP-UX to AIX ontwo IBMPower 595 servers, each with 24 IBMPOWER6
®
proces-sors. The team then used the built-in XIV data migration tool to mapdata from the existing HP EVA storage systems to three IBMXIV sys-tems. The FLEXCUBE data is managed by Oracle 10g in an OracleReal Application Cluster.“The XIV data migration was the most impressive aspect of the wholeimplementation phase,” says José do Nascimento, technical specialist,ubank. “We mapped the EVA disks to the XIV system and the migra-tion then ran in the background, with no perceptible effect on the per-formance of our core banking systems and no disruption to users orcustomers. My primary role is on AIX; I’m not a storage specialist. Butthe XIV system is extremely easy to manage—I think they couldn’tmake the interface any easier if they tried!”In addition to FLEXCUBE, the XIV storage system at ubank supportsa lending application and the Delta Integration risk management appli-cations running on AIX. It also supports Microsoft SQL Server data-bases for the bank’s micro-lending function, and these are mirroredin the production environment using the built-in XIV replicationtechnology.
3
IBM XIV Storage Systems
Banking
Case Study
IBMSolution Components
Hardware
●
IBM
®
XIV
®
Storage System
●
IBMPower
®
595
●
IBMSystem Storage
®
TS3500 TapeLibrary
Software
●
IBMAIX
®
●
IBMPowerVM™
IBM Business Partner
●
Datacentrix
“We’ve achieved what we set out to do in perform-ance terms. We also nowhave room to grow, withthe ability to scale bothhorizontally and verti-cally, and we havereduced our capital expenditure.”
—Anton Giacometti, head of Infrastructure,ubank
IT Environment
Operating systems
●
Microsoft
®
Windows
®
Server 2003and 2008
Databases
●
Oracle 10g RAC
●
Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2008
Applications
●
Oracle FLEXCUBE
“Datacentrix, an IBMBusiness Partner, proposed the XIV solution asthe best option for us,” recalls Giacometti. “They knew us and ourenvironment well, which helped us mitigate risk from the project andprovided an excellent service.”ubank deployed three IBMXIV storage systems, each with 27 TBcapacity, plus an IBMSystem Storage TS3500 Tape Library for databackup and archive. Two of the XIV systems are mirrored in a high-availability configuration serving the FLEXCUBE production environ-ment, mirrored to the third XIV system which is located in a disasterrecovery site. ubank is using the built-in XIV snapshot functionality toreduce risk when loading batches or making configuration changesduring prototyping and development, enabling it to quickly roll back toa stable configuration if an error occurs. With the previous storagesolution, snapshot functionality was an unaffordable additionallicensing cost.
High performance, low costs
Over the coming 24 months, ubank anticipates doubling the size of itscustomer base—in part through new relationships with mobileproviders—and expects to maintain its current 40 percent per yeargrowth in data volumes. Simply moving to the new version of FLEX-CUBE entailed a 35 percent growth in data volumes. The low-costcapacity and high scalability provided by the IBMXIV platform aretherefore key benefits for ubank.“In addition to the cost and scalability benefits, the XIV solution hascontributed to a quite radical improvement in end-to-end perform-ance,” says do Nascimento. “Purely on the storage side, we’ve cut somebatch processing runs from ten hours to less than five, and the backupson the XIV run so quickly that we can no longer process the logs fastenough!” The bank has also seen an estimated 50 percent reduction in manage-ment and maintenance costs for storage, as well as a noticeable reduc-tion in energy consumption.“We have definitely seen the benefits of sourcing both servers and stor-age from IBM,” concludes Bosman. “In particular, we see an excellentfit between virtualized XIV storage and the server virtualization capa-bilities of IBMPowerVM on the Power Systems™ platform. The abil-ity to reallocate virtualized server resources on our Power 595 servershas helped us optimize our use of processing power. This all links back to the original goal of having a firm IT foundation for getting to thenext level in business terms, backed by a top-tier vendor.”
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