Halkbank Data Center SAN Success Story
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- Europe
Country
- Turkey
Product
- Brocade DCX 8510 Backbones
- Brocade 7800 Extension Switch
- Brocade Network Advisor
Tech Stack
- Gen 5 Fibre Channel
- InterSwitch Links
- Fibre Channel frame compression
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Energy Saving
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Logistics & Transportation
Use Cases
- Fleet Management
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Halkbank is one of the largest banks in Turkey with at least one branch in every city. It offers a broad range of retail, small business, commercial, corporate, international banking, Internet banking, insurance, loan, and investment products to its customers. The bank's core banking, financial instrument, data warehouse, and customer relationship management applications reside on a SAN. It also supports customer-facing services including online, mobile, telephone, and TV banking, as well as credit card transaction processing. All these are mission critical to the bank’s activities. The SAN must interact with Microsoft SQL, VMware, and Oracle databases running on IBM mainframes. This creates a demanding data center environment that requires the scalability and flexibility to dynamically support growth and the addition of new services.
The Challenge
Halkbank, one of the largest banks in Turkey, was facing a challenge with its aging, slow storage infrastructure that could no longer keep pace with the bank’s increasing I/O demands. The existing data center was quickly exceeding local energy availability. The bank's core banking, financial instrument, data warehouse, and customer relationship management applications reside on a SAN. It also supports customer-facing services including online, mobile, telephone, and TV banking, as well as credit card transaction processing. All these are mission critical to the bank’s activities. The SAN must interact with Microsoft SQL, VMware, and Oracle databases running on IBM mainframes. This creates a demanding data center environment that requires the scalability and flexibility to dynamically support growth and the addition of new services. Halkbank already stores large amounts of data and expects continued growth. Depending on current bank projects, SAN demand can peak at three to four times normal traffic. Dynamic scalability was a non-negotiable requirement. Availability and high performance were also primary requirements.
The Solution
Halkbank began evaluating SAN solutions for two mirrored, active-active environments separated by a distance of 50 meters. The bank chose Brocade DCX 8510 Backbones with Gen 5 Fibre Channel for SAN switching and the Brocade 7800 Extension Switch to provide high-performance data replication between the two sites. Identical SANs were built on Brocade DCX 8510 Backbones with Gen 5 Fibre Channel to deliver a new level of scalability while simplifying the overall SAN infrastructure. Each backbone switch includes three blades, which provide 128 16 Gbps Fibre Channel ports. Backbone switches are connected using InterSwitch Links to reduce congestion and optimize performance while simplifying management. Halkbank achieved active-active connections for data replication using the Brocade 7800 Extension Switch. The Brocade 7800 includes up to 16 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports and 6 1 GbE (GbE) ports for high bandwidth, port density, and throughput. Halkbank can further maximize data replication operations using the switch’s advanced Fibre Channel frame compression and disk and tape protocol acceleration.
Operational Impact
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