Server consolidation - Essay Example

Summary of the work In its bid to improve operating efficiencies and enhance client services, this leading Indian investment bank called Bank Alpha decided to add 3 new branch servers and upgrade its teller and CSR software at all 6 operational locations within the country. The bank evaluated different software systems and architectures and decided to go in for SuperBlade system to drive its teller and CSR software architecture, a business-critical application accessed by thousands of users nationally that processes some 200000 transactions on a daily basis. Indian banks are getting more proactive when it comes to deploying IT hardware and software. There are a number of factors that have fuelled this change within the banking industry in India, the country’s liberal foreign investment policy has encouraged many global banks to set up base in India. At one hand this has increased the competition among various financial institutions and on the other hand it has also elevated the quality of service that a customer expects from the banking sector. This has led to many private and public sector banks going in for an increased focus towards IT deployment. Headquartered in New Delhi, the Alpha bank has more than 500 employees who focus on fund raising, credit lending, international operations, bank cards and intermediary business. As more foreign and local banks emerge to challenge its role in these fields, Alpha must strengthen its competitive advantages and find new ways to please its growing list of customers in the region. In order to do so, alpha decided to revamp its information technology (IT) infrastructure to support an ambitious program of new development. The company’s overall plan was to consolidate its core banking system, implement automatic deposits and withdrawals nationwide, and provide expanded banking services to its customers through the deployment of new e-business applications. One of the first such applications was an e-banking system providing easy-to-use, 24x7 financial services to its customers via the Internet. This, along with other new e-business initiatives that would follow, needed the support of a highly reliable, available and scalable infrastructure. Project: Server consolidation Pain Points: Physical and management complexity, high costs, and proprietary operating systems. Benefits: Server consolidation, lower total cost of ownership, enterprise-class features, better performance, virtualization To build such an infrastructure, alpha turned to Company Alpha. The company implemented 3 servers, all running Linux, to provide: ·     An enterprise portal, allowing the bank to publish its financial and marketing information on the Internet. ·     24x7 customer banking services such as account inquiries, transfers and payments. ·     An information exchange platform, allowing for data transfer with the government and with ABC’s enterprise customers. Alpha’s new revamped e-banking system--supported by a powerful server deployment and Linux platform deployed with the help of Company Alpha--enabled the company to extend traditional services to its customers in a new way. This activity has saved the company and its customer’s time by minimizing phone calls and questions, thereby improving overall satisfaction of those who do business with the bank. Deploying the e-banking system on company Alpha platform resulted in savings of more than 50 percent, while offering the stability of an open standards-based Linux system. Alpha is extremely satisfied with the performance of its advanced Company Alpha technology and the added functionality that makes it a stronger competitor in |India’s fast evolving banking environment. Results of the successful implementation of this project - include server consolidation, better performance and total cost of ownership one-fourth that of the already in use proprietary RISC Unix systems. Challenge for the Bank As an industry leader in leveraging technology to automate business processes, this investment bank was experiencing a steady increase in the servers required to host applications and the administrators needed to manage these systems. With data center and other equipment space at a premium, and qualified personnel increasingly scarce and expensive, the answer to reducing both capital and operational costs was server consolidation. The bank set out to find a Company Alpha-based solution running Linux that wouldn’t sacrifice the security, availability and manageability needed for mission-critical applications. SuperBlade Solution The customer evaluated the SuperBlade against legacy systems and found that an application requiring 3 RISC Unix servers could be deployed on just one Processing SuperBlade module. Overall, the processing, switching and networking capabilities housed in a single SuperBlade replace five racks of legacy hardware, consequently the banks’ IT department decided to go in for SuperBlade. Moreover, provisioning and configuration tasks that require three weeks or more with traditional servers are performed in just minutes on the Company Alpha plus the Linux system, enabling IT to accommodate growth and launch new applications in a timeframe never before possible. In the time it takes to install a single legacy server, an entire SuperBlade chassis—can be provisioned. Simplifying server deployment allows developers to focus on strategic initiatives, which means the bank can respond more quickly to business opportunities for its user base. Performance improvements in the form of higher transaction-processing rates have also been documented compared to legacy servers. The SuperBlade can handle one million ex-pression evaluations per second compared to just 120,000 per second on a RISC Unix platform being used by the Bank in its rest of the server systems. Moreover, with the SuperBlade built-in interconnect and high-speed switches, server-to-server communication never leaves the box—which means significant gains in I/O performance and very low latencies. The Bottom Line Overall, the bank found the price/performance of the SuperBlade significantly better than other high-end platforms. A quick TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis revealed that SuperBlade system, once fully configured, delivers better performance at one-fourth the cost of RISC-based machines that are being used for the Banks other servers – with their additional external network and storage switches. At a price point comparable to standalone configurable servers, the SuperBlade provides built-in clustering, built-in high availability, remote management and other enterprise-class features. With its first application, the Alpha Bank saved over Rs 10 lakh in hardware and software costs alone and expects to save at least Rs 50 lakh as more applications are getting deployed on new server systems. Virtualization all along IT management characterizes the SuperBlade as “a new way of providing a generalized hosting facility for applications.” Giving a big boost to the manageability - the system can be divided into multiple partitions, each supporting a unique business service. At the same time, spare space for failover and additional capacity are pooled and accessible to every application, significantly reducing the amount of hardware that must be deployed. Since clustering architecture is built into the DNA of SuperBlade systems, configuring scalability and high availability is no longer a major systems engineering project for every application. The SuperBlade’s virtualized architecture enables N+1 disaster recover (DR), wherein multiple production systems share a single backup machine. Leveraging the interoperability between the SuperBlade, and enterprise storage systems and Remote Data Facility business-continuance software, the bank is meeting its Disaster Recovery requirements through implementation across multiple regional data centers that the bank has within India. Choosing Alpha and Linux for banking infrastructure ABC selected company alpha for its infrastructure solution because the bank considers alpha as one of the top e-business solution providers for the banking industry. The banks also choose Linux, moreover, because alpha has made Linux a viable, effective solution for the e-banking infrastructure. Many service providers are using Linux because it’s a highly reliable operating system for deploying Web infrastructures. Linux solutions can reduce operating costs with flexible open standards that enable cross-platform integration. Also, Linux delivers better uptime than other operating systems, which accelerates our time to market and helps us keep customer satisfaction at a high level. All in all, Alpha and Linux helped the bank overcome real business challenges and seize opportunities to grow more than the industry standards. ·     Three Alpha servers providing workload balancing through Alpha’s proprietary SuperBlade Server and integration with Bank Alpha’s back-end database. ·     Six servers for upgrading of teller and CSR software at all 6 locations functioning as Web servers, supporting the e-banking portal as well. Integrating the Bank’s enterprise application with server software To maintain consistently high performance for its users, Bank Alpha went in for SuperBlade Server running on Linux. This decision is likely to help the bank transform the traditional banking infrastructure into a seamless e-business interface that is profitable for Alpha and its customers. The SuperBlade Server is designed in such a way so as to scale and manage the internet based Web environment effectively, balancing the demands of customers and keeping the e-business running on a continuous basis. And to enable employees to communicate and collaborate in a productive and cohesive unit, Alpha leverages communication software for a rich e-mail and messaging solution available to all employees at the bank. In its Alpha company and Linux solution, Bank Alpha believes it has found the optimal solution for providing exceptional availability, performance and flexibility to e-business solutions and business processing systems. And, of course, cost savings as well. Situation - In 2004, the Alpha Bank developed a new telephone banking system using a speech engine software to provide interactive access to account information. The goal was to provide fast and simple answers to common customer questions. For example, today customers can obtain checking account balances, search transaction histories by date and check number, get lists of nonsufficient funds checks by date, change their PIN, and switch accounts during the call. Basic account balance information is automatically and immediately provided to the caller before other options are selected. Customers continue to have the option of using touch-tone input when noise conditions or need for privacy prohibits voice input. The bank wanted to address three new IVR- related challenges: rapid growth in call volumes, the need to provide other regional Indian-language telephone solutions, and the desire to upgrade and integrate real voice prompts. The need to provide regional language-specific services has also grown, with approximately 45 percent of the bank s base made up of regional language-speaking customers. The bank’s consolidation in other branches is also seen as an effort to ease its customer support infrastructure through-out the country. Servers added to handle call volume Adding call-volume capacity was as straightforward as adding one more server in order to enhance voice-input processing for its set of customers. Other Indian regional language-specific IVR addresses growing customer segment. The bank s development team in association with Company Alpha has created a solution that can be used for any non-English voice-enabled application. Benefits Both new applications and modifications to existing solutions were easy to complete using the bank’s internal IT team and a dedicated software professional team from company Alpha. Although call volumes continue to grow (now more than 25,000 per day), call times have been reduced and overall system reliability remains outstanding. Regional language IVR add-on Approximately 45 percent of the bank’s customer base is regional language oreiented with more growth expected. In light of above mentioned fact - it was natural for the bank to expand its IVR solution to include this important market segment as well. Read More