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CPH Bank renews its storage infrastructure in all-flash with system solutions
In order to replace its storage infrastructure HPE StorageWorks EVA 4400, which had reached its end-of-life milestone, CPH bank called upon System Solutions who deployed the all-flash Store Serv 3 PAR of HPE. The storage capacity and performance has increased while guaranteeing maximum reliability.
“We already possessed a SAN storage HPE StorageWorks EVA 4400 based on classic hard drive disks, but it had reached the endof- life date and was written-off. Also, the limits of the platform had been reached” explains Mathieu Desmet, CIO and member of the board of CPH Bank. “Storage is the center of our banker profession and critical for our competitiveness”.
The storage platform was spread over 3 sites: 2 in the Tournai office with synchronous communications and 1 asynchronous in the Mouscron office for availability and conformity/ audit reasons. At the time, each system could manage 11 To of data.
To replace this infrastructure, CPH bank performed a market study during the spring of 2016 and launched a tender. Three solutions were identified: the simple replacement of the hard disk drives, a mixed solution combining hard disk drives and solid state drives and an all-flash approach. In the end, System Solutions suggested an all-flash storage 3 PAR StoreServ to replace the classical hard drive disks, covered by a 5-year contract. “System Solutions has negotiated interesting and competitive financial conditions, not only for the material, but also for the licenses, knowing that deduplication was included in the price” explains Yves Dutrieux, manager of the IT department at CPH. “Besides, even if the price of the solution was a bit more expensive, the SLA times were better, and the storage capacity has been sensibly increased. “
CPH bank disposes now over 43 To storage capacity on the 2 sites in Tournai and 72 To on a third site, knowing that several storage bays are still available, that the solid state drives are not full and that the various capacities have been calculated without compression, which leaves supplementary margin for the future. This virtualization technology has permitted to eliminate the data transfer bottleneck without too many important modifications to the network infrastructure. And we didn’t mention the gain of space in the racks and the energy consumption reduction of the systems.
Yves Dutrieux also insists on the quality of the technical support of both partners, being HPE and System Solutions. A maintenance contract foresees a 4-hour or next-business-day intervention in function of the criticality as well as a proactive maintenance scheme and an automatic alarm in case of problems (even potential). In addition, Mathieu Desmet emphasizes, “System Solutions was a supplier some years ago and for a bank in general, it is very important to install a relationship of trust and confidence. This is especially true for CPH”. From his side, Yves Dutrieux insists on the transfer of know-how. “The set-up has been done in partnership with HPE and System Solutions, but we always privilege a progressive hand-over after installation and validation, especially with critical machines which we prefer to deploy ourselves”.
Caroline Guns, Account Manager of System Solutions, puts the accent on the added value of the pre-sales analysis of System Solutions which allowed to identify the specific needs of the customer and to negotiate with HPE in order to obtain (even) more attractive conditions and the implementation/configuration before the transfer of the know-how to CPH. “The project has been taken over by a team”, says Caroline Guns. “Today the entire environment is totally stabilized and all data have been migrated, at great satisfaction of CPH”.
“The migration was relatively fast and has been done in respect of the delay, knowing we were linked to the end-date of the EVA support contract”, concludes Yves Dutrieux.
The last private independent French-speaking player, CPH bank is a local proximity bank organized as a cooperative company with a network of 29 agencies in Hainaut, Namur and Brabant Walloon.
To assure its stability, CPH bank could count on its solid financial position allowing to hold a comfortable situation (solvency ratio above 16%), never called upon the State for support and reinvests locally its client resources.
In 2015, CPH bank had a book value of 2.350,8 million € (+5,7%) with an own capital of 235,3 million € (+6,7%), and a stability ratio of 16,45% (+6,5%). For more information: www.cph.be
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